Ikimi Resignation From APC Raises Dust In Edo

The resignation of the chieftain of All Progressives Congress (APC) and one of the party elders in Edo state, Chief Tom Ikimi from the party, is generating heat in the state.
Chief Ikimi, who is Nigeria’s former Foreign Affairs Minister, quit APC early in the week, but did not indicate which party he would now align with as the nation prepares for 2015 general elections.  In a response to Ikimi’s resignation, the National Chairman of APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, described the development as being good for the party, adding that the party is studying the situation.
“He (Ikimi) is giving himself an undue importance which he does not deserve because he is insulting all the leaders of the party saying that he is the only sensible person in the party. “That is not true and that is not possible at all.
“What he is doing is reporting himself to the entire nation, and displaying the kind of person he is. What is happening really is that both the PDP and APC are being purified and that all the birds that flock together are beginning to flock together and that is a good thing for this country. It is good for the APC and the PDP. We don’t want people who don’t think like us, don’t have the same ideology or has not committed to that ideology.
“We are losing some and gaining some. The process of ideological purification is underway and those who don’t share the same belief like us are all going the same way and that is nothing we have to regret at all.
“I don’t know how many votes he controls that we will lose, but we will see. Maybe he will be able to make PDP win in Edo State because he controls the Edo voters. February is around the corner. He is arrogating to himself an influence he does not have either in Edo or nationally to affect the course of the February election, not even in Edo State.”
Also the Edo State chapter of APC said it is waiting for the next political move of Ikimi before responding to the issues he alleged were the reasons for his resignation from the APC.
The state chapter of the party, while wishing its former national leader best wishes, said the claims and counter-claims in his resignation letter would be appropriately addressed at the shortest possible time, adding that with his “exit, the party will be better organised at the local to win the next coming elections.”
The Publicity Secretary of the party in the state and former state chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Mr. Godwin Erhahon, said: “For now, the state chapter will not want to comment in details on the decision of Chief Tom Ikimi to leave us. At the appropriate time when he settles down in the PDP where he is obviously going, we will have time to respond to some of his outbursts. We saw a lot of claims and counter-claims in the letter he wrote; we will address them in due time.”
On how the party feels about the departure, he said: “Even now in Igueben, the member representing Igueben in the state House of Assembly is from the PDP which means even while he was with us, he lost his local council to PDP and therefore we cannot lose more than that now that he is gone. We are also hoping that with his exit, the party will be better organised at his local level and by the next election, we are going to be able to defeat the PDP in that constituency and that tells you that we don’t believe that we have lost anything substantial or meaningful.
“Like I said, we don’t want to join issues with him at this level. At the proper time, we shall reply him and when we reply him he will also know that we know what we are doing. And we wish him well wherever he is going but we sympathize with him because if he said he is running away from crocodile in APC, he is running into the lion’s den.
“We see it as a good omen. In every system, God will always help those who mean well. We pray that whoever that will constitute obstacle to victory in the 2015 presidential election; God will push him or her out. God is not waiting till these people do damage to the system before sending them out. All of them who want to leave, we wish them well.”

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