More Woes for APC, Amaechi in Rivers

For ignoring several warnings to follow the path of justice, the All Progressives Congress in Rivers State is heading to a similar scenario, which led to its disqualification from the 2019 general election, due largely to the failure of the former Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, to provide fair and just leadership as the undisputed leader of the party in the state, Ejiofor Alike reports

In a replay of what happened in 2019, a Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt last Tuesday nullified all the primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State. The court gave the verdict while delivering judgment in a suit filed by some aggrieved members of the party who claimed they were excluded from the delegate elections that preceded the APC primaries.

One George Orlu and four others, who claimed to have purchased nomination forms, approached the court requesting that the primaries of APC should be nullified following their alleged exclusion.

In his judgment, Justice E.A. Obile ruled that the persons were unlawfully excluded from the APC primaries. He held that the aggrieved persons were shut out of the primaries unlawfully, describing the process as a nullity. The judge ruled that all the APC primaries stood nullified and the winners should not be recognised as candidates.

For those who followed the build-up to the 2023 general election in the state, it was not surprising that the court arrived at the verdict. The current crisis in Rivers APC started last March as soon as Senator Magnus Abe and Pastor Tonye Cole started seeking fresh bids to clinch the governorship ticket of the party for the 2023 election.

The immediate past Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi was said to have stoked the fresh fire when he allegedly rallied the leadership of the party in the state to pick Cole, his close ally and Lagos-based businessman, as its governorship candidate in the state, without any primary election. The development came days after Abe’s declaration to run for the 2023 party ticket was unanimously adopted by his faction of the party, chaired by a former state lawmaker, Golden Chioma.

It was gathered that 10 governorship aspirants from the riverine extraction, including Tonye Princewill and former Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside had signed a pact to support whoever emerged from their faction.

Amaechi who led the faction that controls the party in the state, was said to have earlier asked all the 10 aspirants to halt consultations, to enable his camp to choose a consensus candidate.

Disclosing how the consensus agreement was reached, a former Commissioner for Transport in the state, George Tolofari, who was the arrowhead of consensus arrangement in Amaechi’s camp, stated that 19 leaders of the party met in Abuja with 13 aspirants and unanimously adopted Cole as consensus candidate for the Riverine-Ijaw aspirants. According to him, Cole would face any other aspirant that might wish to contest the party primaries on the APC.

 “Nineteen leaders of our dear party met in Abuja with the 13 aspirants and unanimously adopted Tonye Cole as consensus candidate for the Riverine-Ijaw aspirants to face any other aspirant that may wish to contest the party primaries on the APC,” he reportedly said.

But in a swift reaction, the Abe’s faction of APC in the state described the endorsement of Cole as “selfishness in the highest order by the minister of transportation.”

The leader of Abe’s faction, Chioma, said: “Cole does not have our approval. We cannot be with him; the man is not a party man. He is a business associate of the minister of transportation.”

“This entails that selfishness has been taken to the highest order that a man who has no business of playing politics, who has no iota of idea of playing politics is shoved down the throat of his supporters,” Chioma added.

Chioma alleged that Amaechi was backing Cole because of their business dealings, noting that there were “more credible and experienced candidates in the minister’s faction; he did not endorse them.”

Shortly after Chioma’s reaction, Abe declared that no amount of gang-up would make him drop his ambition to govern the state in 2023 or change the will of the people.

Apparently referring to Amaechi, the former senator noted that the people of the state cannot be enslaved by anyone, and advised his supporters to brace up for the fight ahead, which he vowed would be tough.

The former federal lawmaker, who has since defected to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) where he clinched governorship ticket, added that as a democrat, he would always respect the decision of the people if there was a fair and just process. He however insisted that he would not respect illegal decisions taken by some people.

In his words, “I am a democrat. If there is a fair, and just process by which our people take a decision and it is not me, I will respect that decision. But if people go and gather and do kangaroo and say it is this person or that person, I will not agree. For APC to succeed in this state, we must show a clear, transparent and honest process by which everybody who is entitled to genuinely have a say. If they cook up a process and you think that process will crown a king, you will end up with a king that will never be crowned.”

Also speaking, the former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in the state, Wogu Boms, added that the endorsement of Cole as the consensus governorship candidate of the party would fail.

“Do not tell me anything; I know everything, we experimented with Dakuku, we failed spectacularly; we experimented with Tonye Cole, he could not even enter the ballot; we used Awara, we failed woefully again; now we still want to experiment with Tonye Cole again, it will not work,” he added.

Similar tussle between the party’s faction loyal to Amaechi and the camp led by Abe had made the court to disqualify the party from participating in the 2019 general election in the state. At the end, both Cole and Abe lost the party’s ticket.

In 2019, Cole had, with the backing of Amaechi, emerged as the party’s candidate in a similar controversial circumstance. His ambition was aborted by the court, which stopped the state APC from fielding any candidate for the elections due to the irregularities exposed in the primaries, which had fuelled multiple litigations instituted by the Amaechi and Abe’s factions.

While the national body of APC had recognised Cole as the governorship candidate of the party, Abe had vehemently kicked against Cole’s controversial emergence  and filed a case in court. The case ultimately went to the Supreme Court which upheld the disqualification of the party from the 2019 governorship election.

Cole had blamed Abe and his allies for the quagmire the party found itself. Cole’s faction had also accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of meddling in the affairs of the APC. Abe, in turn, had blamed those who imposed Cole on the party as the governorship candidate through an illegal process. He had also argued that the party would not have been caught in the confusion if the national body had listened to the cries of aggrieved members of the party in the state.

He reportedly said: “I didn’t create the problems; Cole did. His problem was created by those who brought him. We went to court because clearly from the onset what the other faction was doing was putting them in direct confrontation with the Nigerian judicial system. Because of the powerful interest of some individuals, the party, at the last minute, decided to ignore that reality and flowed with the illegality being perpetrated in the state.”

Reacting to the last Tuesday judgment of the Federal High Court, the APC in the state described it as dead on arrival. The state APC spokesperson, Darlington Nwauju, said the Supreme Court had in a plethora of cases declared political parties as their own chief executive officers and could regulate their own affairs. He added that the subject matter, which formed the fulcrum of the judgment, was an internal matter. He also described the court’s decision as a travesty of justice.

He said: “The persons who went to court against our party are now members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and therefore they are meddlesome interlopers in our internal affairs.

“We do believe firmly that the appeal court shall treat the matter dispassionately and deliver justice in this matter because this is not an action against the primaries of our party but an attempt at challenging the composition of our delegate list.

“We assure Rivers people that the attempt to rehash the 2019 episode in Rivers is already dead on arrival. Nothing will stop the APC in Rivers from being on the ballot in 2023.”

Indeed, the Supreme Court had ruled that the political parties should take charge of their internal affairs but the same apex court also warned the parties to adhere to their own rules. The question is: Did APC adhere to its rules in the 2019 primaries?  Amaechi’s opponents had insisted that if the former minister had provided responsible leadership in Rivers APC and allowed for a fair and transparent process in electing the party’s candidate, the party would not have been humiliated by the courts in 2019.  But the former transportation minister’s alleged determination to impose Cole on the party plunged it into avoidable crisis that caused it such electoral fortunes. The party may be heading to the same direction in 2023.

For now, Cole has appealed the judgment and is hoping that 2023 would be different from 2019.