The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Tonye Cole, has said that the state wing of the APC was never informed of President-elect Bola Tinubu’s visit to the State.
He said Governor Nyesom Wike should have given the APC in Rivers State a notice that he was inviting Tinubu.
Cole disclosed this on Thursday when he made a guest appearance on Arise Television’s Morning Show program.
President-elect, Bola Tinubu, had arrived Rivers on Wednesday to commission some projects at the invitation of the State Governor.
But the APC in Rivers, through its Publicity Secretary, Darlington Nwauju, had dissociated itself from the visit.
In a statement, the APC described its Principal’s visit as private and at the invitation of Governor Wike, adding that it has nothing to do with the party in the state.
Fielding questions about the development, Cole said that he was absent during Tinubu’s visit because he was not invited.
According to him, “I will describe the visit from two sides. First side of it is the President-elect. As a President-elect of Nigeria, he has the right to go anywhere. And the Rivers State Government invited him, and he has come, honoured that invitation, and has come to Rivers State as a President-elect; with that, we have no problem at all.
“Where the issue is is that the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, ought also to be the governor of all Rivers people. And one of the things that he should have done if he is inviting the President-elect, who is the President-elect of all Nigerians, would have been to call us as APC in Rivers State to inform us that he is inviting the President-elect and would want us to be part of that programme.
“We never got any invitation, I was never invited personally, I was not invited in my private capacity as a candidate of the party, neither was our party, APC, in the State invited to any of those things, and I believe that is where the difference between the President-elect acting in his capacity as President-elect for all Nigerians and Governor Wike acting in his capacity as a governor of just a particular Rivers people. That is where our disagreement stands.”
