Mike Wabali
If the Rivers State chapter of the All Progressive Congress only hope of achieving electoral success in the 2019 general elections is the use of federal might as is being bandied in some quarters, then the party might be in for some shocker.
The APC has in the past few months, been busy with the internal destruction of the state’s party structures as the fights between faction loyal to Senator Magnus Abe on one hand, and that loyal to the minister of Transportation and leader of the party in the state, Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi rage on.
The Conflicting judgment passed by the Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt on Thursday and subsequent conflicting interpretations of same by the dramatis personae shows that the party is not ready to do the work of intense politicking to put it’s right foot forward in 2019.
Given series of legal imbroglios that have come to characterize the state’s party congresses and the intervention of the National working committee in the matter, the Rivers APC Crisis might become the doom of the APC’s national convention on Saturday, the 23rd of June.
Politics is a game of numbers and it will be interesting to see the state chapter of the party put it’s best man forward for the general elections in 2019. The party stands the chance of competing favourably when it puts in the best of the best. However, the party is not only lacking in its readiness to make that happen, it has equally not seen the danger that the in-house fighting between gladiators in the party presents.
Barry Mpigi, the APC member representing Tai/Oyigbo Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives fired an unfamiliar shot during the Local Government Election held on the 16th of June 2018. Not only did he vote, (the Rivers APC boycotted the election) he also called on his constituents to vote massively for the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, if the APC fails to present an Ogoni candidate as the gubernatorial candidate of the party in the 2019 general elections.
If anything can be deduced from Mpigi’s statement, it is the fact that the Magnus Abe’s faction might pitch its tent with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, thereby depleting the ranks of the APC in the state.
Senator Abe, Barry Mpigi, Chief Chidi Wihioka and a host of them showed absolute loyalty to the then governor of Rivers and current Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi when they stood by the minister during his lengthy battle with the then federal government led by the then Rivers State Police Commissioner, Joseph Mbụ.
It behooves on the minister to repay such loyalty by eschewing any form of improper exertion of personal will in the affairs of the party.
If the party led by the minister of Transportation wants to remove Gov Wike as they claimed, the party should, as a matter of urgency, return all its members under one roof and entrench principles of internal democracy in all their doings.
A party that parades one state chairman is formidable against that which parades two factional chairmen. It reeks of hypocrisy to achieve democracy by using undemocratic processes.
The Rivers APC should put its house in order.
