APGA crisis: Bianca Ojukwu shuns peace move

The last hope to reconcile the gladiators in the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) crisis may have been dashed at the weekend when the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s widow, Amb Bianca said she would not welcome in her home the National Chairman of the party, Chief Victor Umeh.

The leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike had scheduled to lead Umeh today to the Casa Bianca Ojukwu’s Enugu residence to reconcile him with Bianca.

But the Nigeria’s ambassador to Spain told Daily Sun that she would today shut her doors against the embattled factional APGA national chairman, saying she did not see the rationale behind the planned reconciliation.

“I have explained to Okenwa (Uwazuruike) that there is no basis for this reconciliation. I see the move as cosmetic and window dressing because if we say we have reconciled and go home to continue in the old order then nothing has changed.

“What are we reconciling when APGA has no functional organ, when one man is still controlling everything in the party, it is a cosmetic arrangement and I won’t be party to it,” she said.

The planned reconciliation of Umeh with Bianca by Uwazuruike would have been the last stage before the final one where all the gladiators in the crisis would have been brought together.

The MASSOB leader had already met with Umeh, Emeka Ojukwu (Jnr) in his house in Owerri, Imo State as well as put some words across to Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State on the need for all of them to sheath their swords.

But Bianca exclusively told Daily Sun that had Umeh listened to the advice of the party leaders to re-structure APGA, there would not have been the clamour now for reconciliation.

Ojukwu’s wife, therefore, insisted that she would not be party to any reconciliation so long as there was no party organ and Umeh continuing to run the party as his personal estate.

She mentioned the recent constitution of a Reconciliation Committee by Umeh alone without recourse to the National Working Committee of the party as part of the problems they had in the party, saying until Umeh realized that the party belonged to all of them, she would not make herself available to any “window dressing” reconciliation.

The ambassador was angry that those her husband left APGA in their hands had not protected the legacies Ojukwu bequeathed to them, saying Umeh failed to listen to wise counsel. DAILYSUN