Okenyi Kenechi
Sometime in February, Magnus Abe, the Senator representing Rivers South-East Senatorial District in the National Assembly had a thanksgiving service to celebrate his victory and that of his comrades at the appeal court at the Anglican Church Diobu. It was well attended by the who-is-who in the ruling All Progressive Congress in the country including the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso, Sokoto State governor, Imo State governor, John Oyegun, Davis Ikanya, Chidi Wihioka and then the Executive governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike.
Governor Wike drove to the reception at the Port Harcourt Polo Club to a thunderous welcome with the MC announcing the arrival of the governor with so much joy that he called him “Mr project one of Africa” in an APC event. The crowd responded in affirmation with such enthusiasm one might think it was a PDP event in the centre of governor Wike’s village.
Wike loves the crowd, it is a fact and sensing that the crowd of Magnus supporters were welcoming enough, proceeded to the stage, danced and danced and danced and then spoke. Before he spoke, the then chairman of the APC in the state, Davis Ikanya had come under fire from Abe’s supporters for asking them to respond to ‘change’ instead of ‘Magnus for governor’ to the chant of “APC”.
Wike said that he had wanted to go to Bori, where the Free Rivers Initiative – the Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi’s faction– of the APC was having a rally but his aides informed him that the right venue for the reception was the Polo Club in GRA. That was a shade thrown at the minister who even the Senate president regretted was not there and wondered why the APC would be having two different events on the same day.
Non-discerning minds might think that perhaps, the governor was at the venue of the reception so as to eschew politics of bitterness as was bandied in the media. However, for the discerning minds, the cross-carpeting that forced the ruling APC into becoming the minority in the Senate on Tuesday was hatched that day.
It happened before, in 2014, where Rivers State was the decider-in-chief of who eventually became the president of the country and the failure of the APC to capture Rivers State using the courts is proving to be the party’s doom.
The Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi’s role that saw the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari is perhaps what Nyesom Wike is playing and Wike, having become a minister before winning the governorship election in 2015 has garnered quite an experience in national politics.
The governor has made it a policy uprooting the Amaechi’s structure politically in a Machiavellian style and has since then been consistent in attacking the legacies of the minister using both conventional and unconventional media that only but a few people remember anything the minister did well as governor.
For political starters, most of the guests invited to Rivers State to commission projects came for political negotiations. However, it is tied to project commissioning so as to douse any tension. I tell you what, any day you see president Buhari come to Rivers State to commission projects under Wike, know that the president is ready to defect too.
As the APC-led federal government is on its last lap before its popularity is once again put to test at the polls, it is uncertain as to whether the party’s structure will still have a foothold in Rivers State. Considering the fact that Senator Abe belongs to the clique of the Senate president, if the senator yields to demands and officially defects, then the APC in Rivers might as well be dead as Barry Mpigi said during his defection speech in Tai two weeks ago.
However, from the look of things and from rumours that the 6 governors of the APC will defect to the PDP within days, Wike might have played it better, both home and away and might see to the end of the ruling APC same way the minister of transport decapitated the PDP in 2014/2015.
The PDP can ascribe its current luck to Rivers State not just in terms of finance but also in terms of political will. It is still the same political calculation that led to the emergence of Uche Secondus from Rivers as the chairman of the opposition PDP In 2015, I wrote that with the emergence of Nyesom Wike as governor, even Buhari is not safe and it is coming to pass as the very pillar that holds the Buhari’s presidency is shaking vigorously and is on the verge of collapse.
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