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Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has described as local arrangement, the alliance between the party and African Action Congress (AAC) in the just concluded March 9 Rivers State governorship election.
APC’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, made the clarification while responding to question on whether the victory of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was a big loss to the APC, noting that although some results were questionable, the ruling party would not join the AAC to protest the outcome of the election.
Speaking to newsmen at the weekend on the feeling of the party over PDP’s victory, he said: “No, it is not true that APC felt hurt over PDP’s victory. We don’t have anything to do with the Rivers State election. APC didn’t have candidates in the election and that is why, from the beginning, we didn’t throw ourselves so much into it.
“You knew that the Supreme Court ruled that we were not qualified to contest. So, on that basis, whatever what happened in Rivers, whether at the local government that gave 80,000 votes during the presidential election and suddenly produced 320,000 votes for Wike during governorship election didn’t hurt us in any way.
“If INEC says that was correct, fine; it is up to the parties involved to take action if they find it necessary but for us at APC, we didn’t have the opportunity to contest unfairly in Rivers State,” he said.
On the allegation that APC adopted the AAC during the election, when a chieftain of the party worked directly with opposition party, the party spokesperson said: “No, we did not go into alignment with AAC. What became the issue last time was whether the actions of the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, amounted to anti-party activities and I said that it did not because he did not deny any of our candidates anything in Rivers State.
“I separated what had happened in Rivers from (those of) Ogun and Imo states where we had our own candidates yet our own members worked against own candidates and worked for some other candidates. It is different in Rivers. Whatever local arrangement they had there, we were not aware of it, we were not part of it. I am sure you didn’t see anybody there campaigning for anybody outside of APC,” he said.
