NATH OMAME, Jr. l Friday, May 12, 2017
PORT HARCOURT, Rivers, Nigeria – To be entirely honest, despite some feeble attempts by the Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, APC, to reinvent the party after its crushing defeat in the 2015 general elections, the APC still has its feet stuck deep in the mud.
Concisely put, the general elections relative to Rivers State was essentially a combustive political contest between former Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and the then Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike.
The APC in Rivers State is currently entrapped in a vicious whirlpool of defections. Grassroots political mobilisers, leaders and their members are decamping from the APC to the PDP with the rapidity of a Sahel fire
As the fog that enveloped the state after the results of the general elections sank deeper and deeper into the consciousness of the indigenes and residents of Rivers State, expectations were riveted to a reenactment of the power play that ensued between the two political gladiators in the state, Amaechi and Wike.
Wike, who emerged as the political satellite of former President Goodluck Jonathan, from Otuoke, Bayelsa State, and the former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, from Okrika, in Rivers State, both from the South South, used his support from the federal might to his utmost advantage.
His motorcade appeared like that of a sitting governor. To justify his new found position as Amaechi’s political adversary, he empowered his political supporters leveraging on his closeness to the seat of power at the centre.
As it is, Amaechi and Wike from the antecedence of history have swapped political positions. While Amaechi is now minister of transportation, Wike is the governor of Rivers State.
True, Wike re-invented the PDP in Rivers State after Amaechi defected to the then newly formed APC with members of his cabinet, aides, loyalists and supporters from the PDP. The financial muscle required to sustain the political survival of the PDP was provided by Wike.
In the same vein, Amaechi had no problems funding the APC because even though the country was already ensconced on the threshold of a nagging recession, the state was relatively rich with the hitherto Rivers State Reserve Fund, bolstering with about N53 billion, acted as a veritable bulwark.
Therefore, haven changed political positions, Wike replacing Amaechi as governor of Rivers State, and Amaechi moving over to the centre as the minister of transportation, Amaechi’s loyalists, supporters, former aides, and members of the APC were expectant that Amaechi will do what Wike did for his loyalists, supporters, aides and members of the PDP in Rivers State when he was a minister of state, and later the supervising minister of education.
For the records, Wike as a minister of the federal republic of Nigeria, operating from Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, unless while out of the country on official assignment, made it as a point of duty to be in Rivers State on Friday evenings and returned to Abuja to resume work on Monday mornings. He was mostly on the road, visiting grassroots politicians, mobilising.
Responding to a question asked by this reporter in June last year, Wike stated: “I was always in Rivers State during the weekends while I was a minister. I wanted to be effective. I personally paid for my airfares. And today, I am the governor of Rivers State. If I set my mind on doing something, I go all out to put in my best.”
Amaechi’s style is a huge contrast to that of Wike. Amaechi visited Rivers State for the first time after the 2015 general elections after the APC suffered a humiliating defeat by the PDP, on August 29, 2015, about three months after Wike had been sworn-in as the governor of Rivers State.
Expectedly, Amaechi made promises to his supporters, assuring them that he will give them a sense of belonging upon being appointed into the federal government by President Mohammadu Buhari. It was clear to all unbiased minds in Nigeria that Amaechi who was the director-general of Buhari’s presidential campaign would get an appointment in Buhari’s government.
If Amaechi is not bothered that his former political aides are decamping to the PDP, along with their members in droves, essentially those whose political careers were nurtured by him, then, he should worry about what APC youths told him at the high-tempered meeting at Woji Road, GRA Phase 2, Port Harcourt
Despite mounting opposition from the PDP-controlled Rivers State government, Amaechi was cleared by the 8th Nigerian Senate after two botched attempts to appear before the Senate for screening, and appointed as the minister of transportation by President Buhari.
On record, Amaechi was said to have been instrumental to the appointment of Dr. Dakuku Peterside as the APC gubernatorial candidate in Saturday, April 11, 2015, governorship election; Amaechi was also influenctial to the appointment of Dakuku as the director-general of NIMASA.
Amaechi is also influential in the appointment of his former Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mrs. Ibim Seminitari, as the Acting Managing Director of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC.
Others are the former Assistant National Secretary of the APC, Orji Ngofa, and former Chairman, Eleme Local Government Area as an ambassador, and the current Executive Director, Finance and Adminstration, of the NDDC, Terry Mene, from Ogoniland.
The APC in Rivers State is currently entrapped in a vicious whirlpool of defections. Grassroots political mobilisers, leaders and their members are decamping from the APC to the PDP with the rapidity of a Sahel fire.
A former chief of staff in former Governor Celestine Omieha’s government, Chief Emeh Glory Emeh, from Emohua Local Government Area defected to the PDP with some dose of fanfare. Other notable APC chieftains including a former Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Sunny Nwokekoro, under Amaechi’s first term as governor have also decamped to the PDP.
Two weeks ago, a former Speaker of Asari-Toro Legislative Assembly, Orolosama Amachree and a former Chairman, Degema Local Government Area, Samuel Ikirioma, announced their defection to the PDP. Sources close to some of those that have decamped indicate that more APC chieftains will defect from the APC to the PDP before the end of 2017.
Amachree who spoke at the Alfred Diette-Spiff Cultural Centre, on Thursday, last week, when Governor Wike formally received the first batch of those who have defected from the APC to the PDP, lamented that Amaechi abandoned them when they needed him to show them love and support as their political leader.
His elder brother, a former Chairman of Asari-Toru Local Government Area, Ojukaiye Flag-Amachree, was arrested and detained by the Police on April 19, 2016. Worried that security agents may swoop on them, the next level of APC political leaders in the local government, they travelled to Abuja.
The former Speaker of Asari-Toru Local Legislative Assembly said he was shocked when Amaechi asked them what they were doing in Abuja when they had no money to pay for their accommodation. Flag-Amachree was later released on bail on the orders of the Court of Appeal on November 16, 2016.
Many other APC leaders have their own painful stories to tell. Some influential members of the APC in Rivers State are nurturing snowballing angst towards Amaechi, claiming that the former governor is fixated on always availing a very small niche of his aides with political offices while running the party like an emperor.
In March, Amaechi conveyed a meeting at the Dome, along Odili Road, in Port Harcourt where he addressed the state leaders of the APC. Amaechi then informed the leaders that there will be no primaries for the APC governorship position, Senatorial and the membership seats for the House of Representatives in 2019.
When some leaders asked what will happen to the political ambitions of Dakuku and Abe, the minister was said to have told those present at the meeting that he has settled both politicians.
When pressed to explain, Amaechi stressed that he influenced Dakuku’s appointment as the director-general of NIMASA, while he ensured that Abe was provided adequate security to enable him campaign for the Rivers East Senatorial seat which he won on the second legislative re-run election, on Saturday, December 10, 2015.
Amaechi was supposed to hold a meeting with the APC youth leaders from the 23 local government areas in the state, on Saturday, April 1, but the youths turned down Amaechi’s request on the grounds that they have been marginalised by the leaders of the party, led by the minister of transportation.
After an appeal by some of the leaders of the party, the youths agreed to attend the rescheduled meeting slated for Saturday, April 8. The meeting was to start at 9.am at the Empowerment Support Initiative, ESI Centre, at 120, Woji Road, GRA Phase 2, Port Harcourt.
The minister’s security details quickly rushed Amaechi into a waiting vehicle, abandoning his official cars as the youths began shouting “you people will come back from Abuja and Lagos to meet an empty party
Amaechi did not arrive the venue of the meeting until 3.pm. No valid explanation was given to the youths for the delay. Amaechi was said to have carpeted Senator Abe for refusing to support Dakuku’ s candidature in 2015, despite all the support, he, Amaechi, gave to Abe. Amaechi accused Abe of being partly responsible for Dakuku’s failure in 2015.
The minister of transportation further infuriated the youths from Ogoni when he vowed that he would never support Senator Abe’s quest to become the governor of Rivers State on the platform of the APC as far as he remains the leader of the party in the state.
Youths from Ogoni were said to have protested and shouted at Amaechi for betraying Senator Abe on his preference for Dakuku as the APC ‘s governorship candidate in 2016. The youths from Ogoni were said to have thrown chairs and threatened to disrupt the meeting should Amaechi continue to blame Abe for the troubles of the APC in Rivers State.
Without doubt, Abe was clearly the front runner for the APC governorship ticket in 2015, until Amaechi surprised most people in the state when he announced at an emergency stakeholders meeting he cornered at the government house, that the leaders of the party have unanimously chosen Dakuku as the preferred candidate of the party.
As it later turned out, unfolding events later indicated that Amaechi had long settled for Dakuku, but, however, continued to encourage Abe without any willingness to anoint him as the APC governorship candidate.
APC youth coordinator, Oseleye Ojuka, later pleaded with the youths from the Rivers South East to give the minister another opportunity to address them. Amaechi then continued with his earlier train of thought, blaming politicians that he had given appointments or elevated politically in the past for betraying him.
When the youths asked him of his position on the spate of defection within the party leadership, he gave no convincing response. The youths were vexed that they had been ignored by Dakuku who heads NIMASA as well as Mrs. Seminitari when she held the reins at the NDCC.
The youths were disappointed that party leaders that were at NIMASA and the NDDC were absent at the meeting. Tempers flayed when Amaechi could not make a categorical statement on what his plans for the APC youths were. It was at that point that pandemonium broke out. The youths, furious, insisted that the minister would have to fulfill some of the promises he made to them before the 2015 general elections.
The youths called for the dissolution of the state executive. They asked the minister to restructure the party and bring on board more dynamic men and women to give the party a sense of direction. Head of Social Media, Friday Nneye, was also blunt in his address. He told the minister that the leaders of the party have collectively turned their backs on the welfare of the youths.
Tempers, again, rose when the youths failed to extract a commitment from the minister to roll out welfare packages for the youths before or within 14 days and his blunt refusal to address the need to sack the current state executive of the APC. It was at that point that some youths switched off the main power supply to the venue of the meeting.
The minister’s security details quickly rushed Amaechi into a waiting vehicle, abandoning his official cars as the youths began shouting “you people will come back from Abuja and Lagos to meet an empty party.”
Sources at the meeting said that Amaechi, held with party leaders at the Dome in March, disclosed that the minister of transportation is plotting to draft the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of Sahara Energy, Tonye Cole, as the governorship candidate of the APC in 2019.
Amaechi will be repeating the costly mistake he made in 2015, by influencing the choice of Dakuku over that of Senator Abe who many people in Rivers State believe has a broader acceptance across the state.
Importantly, Ogoniland, consisting of four local governments, Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme, collectively have 400 ,000 voters in the revised register that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, used for the last general elections.
Ogoni has the largest votes after that of the four Ikwerre local government areas of Obio/Akpor, Port Harcourt, Emohua and Ikwerre. Within the APC as currently constituted, Senator Abe has far more electoral relevance than any other politician seeking for elective office in Rivers State.
Abe spends far more time in Rivers State than Amaechi and Dakuku put together. Abe is on ground. He built his own political structures which has delivered him three times to the state and national legislature. The APC will wither if Amaechi attempts to run the party as a one-man show like he did to the PDP while he was still a member and governor, and of course, the APC, after he defected from the PDP.
If Amaechi is not bothered that his former political aides are decamping to the PDP, along with their members in droves, essentially those whose political careers were nurtured by him, then, he should worry about what APC youths told him at the high-tempered meeting at Woji Road, GRA Phase 2, Port Harcourt.
In Nigerian politics, the youths, are more often than not, the political foot-soldiers! However, let the truth be told: Amaechi cannot afford to lose Senator Magnus Ngei Abe, from Bera, Gokana Local Government Area, in Ogoniland. Should both gentlemen politicians path ways, the question that would be asked, would be: why is everybody leaving Amaechi?
The minister should do all he possibly can to prevent such an agonising question from being asked. A word as it is often said is enough for the wise! From what is unfolding, Amaechi by his style of politicking is fastly losing the APC in Rivers State to the PDP. And only Amaechi can stop this furious slide!
This analysis was first published by The Oracle Today Newspaper.
