The Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, and a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Dr Dakuku Peterside has called on party faithful to keep hope alive despite seeming daunting challenges facing the party.
The former gubernatorial candidate of the party explained that recent events after the non-participation of APC in the 2019 Rivers guber election, including recent court cases seemed to have created another wave of legal tussles.
According to him, the national secretariat of the party has set up a reconciliation committee headed by the Senate President, Senator Ahmed Lawan to look into issues in various states of the federation.
While emphasising that it was the right of every Nigerian to access the courts, he, however, said that the internal conflict resolution mechanism within the party’s structure should have been activated and exhausted before seeking outside help.
“The resort to court at every little disagreement does little to help the party. It is for this reason that the party has structure to resolve differences and bring about amicable settlement.
“There is no perfect party anywhere in the world. Members have reasons to disagree and reflect different tendencies but the party has a mechanism to resolve such seeming intractable dissents. They do not resort to the courts at the snap of a finger.
“The national secretariat of our great party has set up a reconciliation committee headed by the Senate President, Senator Ahmed Lawan. We can only defer to this committee and approach them with out differences,” he stressed.
Dakuku stated that contrary to insinuations, the leader of the party, Rt Hon Chibuike Amaechi is open and ready to bring everybody under one roof but would wait for directives from the national secretariat.
“I can tell you that our leader, Rt Hon Chibuike Amaechi bears no grudge against anybody. Politics is about being able to bring different tendencies together to achieve a common purpose.
“He has been in touch with party leaders and I can assure you that the reconciliation committee headed by the Senate President will do a thorough job in their assignment,” he stated.