Osita Okechukwu, a former Voice of Nigeria director-general, has reaffirmed the All Progressives Congress (APC) Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) bloc’s allegiance to President Bola Tinubu.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, April 18, 2025, Okechukwu stated that the organization has no plans to leave the party it helped create, according to Naija News.
Okechukwu also denied reports that prominent CPC members will soon defect, emphasizing that the party cannot overlook President Tinubu’s pivotal role in bringing the merger to conclusion.
According to him, the 2013 merger that created the APC was a laborious coalition that united several political traditions, ethnic groups, and regional interests, including the CPC, ACN, ANPP, and an APGA section.
Given everything Tinubu accomplished to make the merger a reality, Okechukwu said it would be politically reckless to leave the platform now, despite the difficulties in Nigeria.”We received the rumor that we are leaving the APC, according to the CPC block,” he stated. Therefore, we answered no, and following our meeting, we decided that we didn’t need to leave the APC house. After losing the 2003 presidential election in 2004, we worked until 2011, and the idea that we couldn’t tear down the house we had created began to take root in 2013. We cannot demolish that; it would be extremely impoverished for us to attempt to destroy the house we created. This merger brought together all of the nation’s tendencies, religions, and drives under one canopy tree.
And secondly, as you said, why are we supportive and loyal to Mr. President? We said, we cannot, in all good conscience and honesty, forget the critical role President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR played in getting the merger to fruition.
“Now that he became the president, why should we abandon him? Yes, we understand the kitchen table issues that bothers Nigeria, that there is hunger in the land. But we looked at his economic reform program, and we said these economic reform programs will bring fruition in the fullness of time. And at any rate, all the three major presidential candidates are common on the same agenda that president Tinubu had, that they will remove fuel subsidy.
“All we did was, after the meeting, we set up some committees. One of the important ones was mobilisation and contact. And we said the contact should reach Mr. President, and address the concerns of Nigerians about the economic hardship in the country. And the mobilisation should work on our colleagues, the former governor El-Rufai, and others. We said we should also talk to them, to tell them where are you going? Are you going to join those who disorganised and dislocated their political party? Where are you going? You don’t need to go there. There’s no road there. And they don’t have a different agenda from us as well. So that is where we are. We said we cannot destroy the house we built, and we must support Mr. President.”
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