The suspension of Owelle Rochas Okorocha of Imo State by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) has been attributed to his attempt to drag the party to the newly registered All Progressives Congress (APC), APGA national chairman, Chief Victor Umeh has stated.
Umeh, who was flanked by APGA national leaders, made this known in Abuja yesterday.
As stated by him, at no point was the party (APGA) interested in APC, which was formed by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), and a faction of APGA led by Okorocha.
Umeh said: "For some months now, the news had been that APGA had been part of this merger discussion and we went into a meeting to clear this wrong impression so that Nigerians will know that APGA was at no time involved in those discussions, but you will recall that the Governor Rochas Okorocha has been at the forefront of the merger talks. He initially stated he was there on his own and because he is a governor, we could not rein him in at the time, and we were very patient to see if this thing will clear out, but we are aware that on Wednesday INEC registered APC and announced that three parties merged to form the All Progressives Congress and proceeded to withdraw the certificates of the three parties: ANPP, CPC and ACN, but starting from Thursday, people in APC started placing advertorials in the newspapers rejoicing over the new party."
"In each of the advertorials, they always exerted APGA logo as part of the parties that merged. We considered this to be very mischievous and unacceptable. For two days now, on Thursday the governor of Lagos State placed advertorials in four national dailies that we could see with APGA logo conspicuously present there. Yesterday (03 08 13), the Governor of Nasarawa State followed suit..."
He stated Governor Okorocha was suspended "to cut off the branch where APC was infiltrating the rank of APGA."