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From TONY JOHN, Port Harcourt
The All Progressives Congress (APC), Rivers State, has declared that it did not cede any ministerial slot to the immediate past governor of the state, Nyesom Wike.
Also, the opposition party has stated that it would not succumb to any blackmail from any quarters.
State Publicity Secretary of the party, Darlington Nwauju, declared this in Port Harcourt, yesterday, saying no group or an individual has the mandate of APC in Rivers State to speak for the party.
Nwauju said: “Our attention has been drawn to publications made on national dailies in the name of Rivers State APC purporting to have ceded the ministerial slot of the state to the immediate past governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike.
“The state chapter of the party has never interacted with Amalgamated Bola Tinubu Campaign Council as we have more than a hundred NGOs and support groups who worked for the APC in Rivers State.
“However, for the purposes of clarity, no NGO or individual outside the officially recognized party structure has the authority of the state chapter of the party to award any entitlements to the former governor who is obviously a card carrying member of the PDP.”
The party wondered where the group or individual derived its powers from to speak for APC, stressing that Mr. Tony Okocha is not a member of party.
Okocha had at a press conference in Port Harcourt recently, called on Wike to join and lead Rivers APC, acknowledging his (Wike) role to Tinubu’s victory in Rivers State on February 25, presidential election.
Nwauju said: “We have not received any communication from the national secretariat of our party that he has been granted waivers to join our party.
“So, we want to officially dispel that sponsored rumour targeted to package the political ambition of former Governor Wike. We, therefore, reject this obvious public ridicule and assault on our sensibilities as a political party.”
He continued: ” Assuming without conceding that Mr Wike passed through some back channels to fund the presidential campaigns in Rivers which the state chapter cannot even account for, does his Greek gift now qualify him to be rewarded with a Ministerial slot for
sponsoring 12 different court actions to stop Rivers APC from fielding candidates for the 2023 elections; sealing party offices of his opponents, encouraging his loyalists to invade campaign venues and leaving humongous destruction in the trail, denying parties access to state-owned facilities for campaigns, introducing anti-democratic rules beyond the ones set by the INEC?
“The most dangerous state to raise an APC flag or campaign since 2014 till date is Rivers State. What then would this party say to hundreds of our party faithfuls whose freedom and rights were infringed upon through illegal detentions, bodily harm and even outright killing?
“If we had all died and the party non-existent in the state, which APC would former Governor Wike have dreamt of benefitting from?
We cannot reduce our progressive party platform to an arena where merchantiling on betrayals, lies and black mail becomes the only currency for political survival.
“We have no record of any group as Amalgamated Bola Tinubu Campaign Council in our party in Rivers State We have a total of 76 registered NGOs and support groups that supported APC in Rivers State.
“The most fantastically audacious of lies we have heard in the past weeks is for an individual who is not a member of our party at any level to be running around media houses to claim Rivers APC has a new leadership or party stakeholders have ceded the states’s ministerial slot.
“The burden is on President Tinubu to uphold the principle of party loyalty and supremacy for the fact that there is an official party structure in Rivers State.”
