Founder of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Chekwas Okorie, has sent a message to Chief Victor Umeh, the man who ousted him from the party he once led: Repent and seek God’s forgiveness.”

Okorie described Umeh, whose tenure as APGA chairman was recently ended via a court pronouncement, as a man who “has boxed himself into a corner; he is now a political orphan, he caused it.”

“I advise him to repent, to amend his ways, to embrace the path of rectitude, I advise him to do what is happening today so that God can forgive him his sins,” Okorie further said yesterday in his Enugu home in South-East Nigeria while receiving the visiting APGA national leadership.

He called on Umeh’s sponsors to stop supporting him because “it is a bad investment; it will lead to waste and destruction.”

The APGA delegation, led by its interim national chairman, Chief Maxi Okwu, had visited Okorie to apologise to him over the injustice he suffered, which eventually led to his removal as the party’s national chairman.

Okorie, who was seized with emotion, said he was glad that his vindication was coming while he was still alive.

“It is on record that twenty five attempts were made to make peace so that APGA will remain, but all of them were rebuffed,” he said, adding: “We attended all of them but they did not attend one. I am so happy today that I am alive to see my own vindication; this visit is significant to me in so many ways.”

Continuing, the man who recently founded the United Peoples Party (UPP), told his visitors: “If you check DNA of both the APGA and the UPP, they are the same thing. Today, we are debunking the belief that Igbo people are incapable of reconciliation. I will say in the spirit of Easter that we shall forgive one another.”

Okwu, the APGA acting chairman, had earlier informed Okorie that they came on the visit for reconciliation.

“We came here to apologise to you,” he had said. “We have realised that a lot of wrongs have been done to you in the past, but since I took over as national chairman of the party, I deemed it fit that members of the party should reconcile with you.”

It is not yet clear if Okorie would return to APGA or just forge an alliance with the party which presently controls two of the country’s 36 states.

•Photo: APGA Founder Chekwas Okorie.