Appointment of APGA members by Tinubu: President has not done anything wrong - Chukwuma

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By Madu Obi

The recent appointments of members of All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, into the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, administration has continued to generate comments, with a governorship aspirant of APC for the 2025 Anambra election, Sir Paul Chukwuma insisting that President Bola Tinubu has not done anything wrong.

Wife of the late Ikemba Nnewi, Mrs Bianca Ojukwu, a member of Board of Trustees, BoT, of APGA, was appointed Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, while Mr. Mark Okoye, a former Commissioner and currently the Managing Director of Anambra State Investment Promotion and Protection Agency, ANSIPPA, was named Director General of South East Development Commission, SEDC .

Speaking during an interaction with media practitioners at Umueri, Anambra East local government area of Anambra State, Chukwuma said the argument had been that the APC federal government does not like Ndigbo, and wondered why there should be complaints about the president's appointment of APGA sympathizers.

He said: "As a political party, we in APC are partisan, but we remember that we are still one Nigeria. We run a Federation where the sub nationals are in empirically verifiable engagement with the federal government.

"The question is, are those appointed not Anambra people? Are we saying that Mr. President does not have the prerogative to appoint anyone he likes?

If he had taken these appointments elsewhere, the people would still be complaining. For me as a leader of APC, I don't see anything wrong with the appointments the president had made.

I heard that APGA government in the state is claiming that it nominated those appointed. This is not true. If they say they did, let them show us the evidence.

The president of Nigeria, in his fatherly role and listening to the complaints that Igbo are not being carried along, decided to make these appointments.

These recent appointments were not the only Igbo appointments made by the president. If we have 20 people appointed from Anambra and two have APGA background, the president should be commended for considering people outside his political party."

Chukwuma alleged that APGA, as a political party, has been begging and pleading with President Tinubu to remember them, even though in Anambra, they claim that APC does not exist, but when they are in Abuja, they claim that there is an alliance between them and APC, even when there is no such alliance.

He added: "APC does not play politics of winner takes all. We identify credible people wherever they are and as long as they are willing to serve APC government totally.

We have 50 APGA members that are itching to get appointments from APC government, but we can't take all of them because many of them are not credible.

The two people given appointments (Bianca Ojukwu and Mark Okoye) are credible people."