2015: Victor Umeh accepts call to run for Senate, vows that Ndi Igbo will resist any attempt to scuttle the gains of National Confab

National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and a delegate to the National Conference, Chief Victor Umeh, has said that Ndigbo would resist attempts by any section of the country to scuttle the gains made by the National Conference.

He spoke against the backdrop of threats by some radical elements from the northern part of the country to thwart the decisions taken by the conference which they considered to be against northern interests.

The APGA chairman said that the progressive minded members of the confab will resist any plot aimed at preventing “the change coming to Nigeria,” stressing that “anybody who insists on maintaining the status quo ante is an enemy of this country and such hardliners will no longer be allowed to hold the nation to ransom.”

Fielding questions from reporters shortly after the youth wing of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Anambra State chapter paid him a solidarity visit at his Enugu residence and urged him to run for the Anambra Central Senate seat in 2015, Umeh said, “anybody, who decides to stand on the way of progress at the confab will only be shooting himself in the leg because those opposed to progressive change in the way things have been happening in the country are now in the minority.”

Umeh who accepted the call on him by the youths led by Tony Ezekwelu, explained that he would run for the Senate seat to give Ndigbo a strong footing in the quest to properly partake in Nigeria’s nationhood by getting all that is due to them.

He said that the call by the youths who also made him a grand patron, was in line with several of such calls on him in recent times, especially the ones made during his recent 52nd birthday celebrations.  Umeh further told the crowd in his compound that his short stint at the National Conference has made it quite clear to him that the job of representing Ndigbo at the National Assembly was not a beat for the lousy or those whose patriotic zeal in the affairs of the nation was in doubt.

“I thank you for recommending me to go the Senate, and I have accepted your call because of the task involved and the dire need for one who would do the struggle the right way. It is not a job that requires wearing coat,” he said, adding that he was ready to run to ensure that “unpatriotic elements would no longer make Ndigbo lose their rightful place in the comity of the peoples of Nigeria.”