Ahead of the February governorship
election, the Rivers State chapter of the
Peoples Democratic Party is making
moves to assuage the feelings of
aggrieved members after the
emergence of its governorship candidate,
writes CHUKWUDI AKASIKE
Before this time, the Peoples Democratic
Party was the ruling party in Rivers
State. The party suddenly became the
opposition in the state as a result of the
disagreement between the State
Governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, and
President Goodluck Jonathan. Amaechi
defected to the All Progressives
Congress when it became clear that the
PDP structure was being forced out of
his control.
While the state House of Assembly
remains divided ahead of the elections,
the state judiciary has been under lock
and key since June 10, 2014, following
the protracted political crisis in the
state. In all, the PDP in the state, which
initially appeared to be the worst hit,
was able to gather momentum when the
new Chairman of the party, Mr. Felix
Obuah, began to reconcile aggrieved
members.
But the new party executive needed
funds and a leader to move forward. It
was at this point that the then Minister
of State for Education, Chief Nyesom
Wike, came into the picture. Apart from
providing the funds for the state PDP,
Wike charted a new course for the party
and many political heavyweights, such as
a former governorship candidate, Chief
Sergeant Awuse, and former Deputy
Speakers of the House of
Representatives, Austin Opara and
Chibudom Nwuche sang his praises.
Like professional praise singers, some of
the 16 aggrieved governorship aspirants
were among those at the forefront of
tagging Wike “the Moses of our time.”
But one of the politicians disagreed with
such a catchphrase. His stand was that
the biblical Moses did not see the
Promised Land, but Joshua did. So, he
advised other members of the party to
see Wike as “the Joshua of our time.”
But trouble started when it became
clear that Wike was gunning for the
governorship along with 16 governorship
aspirants. Some elders in the state
insisted that the former minister should
not be part of the race. Before then,
the state chapter of the PDP had ruled
that any person had the right to aspire
to the number one position in Rivers
State, irrespective of his senatorial
district, local government council or
ethnicity.
The disagreement took another dimension
when the national campaign office of the
PDP in Abuja became a battleground for
members of the party from Rivers State
as they engaged one another in a free-
for-all over the refusal of the party to
rotate the governorship position of the
state. Many party members were injured
during the public fight.
However, the move to stop Wike
intensified when the 16 aggrieved
governorship aspirants converged on the
Liberation Stadium in Port Harcourt
under the aegis of the Rivers
Mainstream Coalition to express their
dissatisfaction over Wike’s presence in
the governorship race and the refusal of
the state PDP to allocate the
governorship position to the riverine
area. They (16 governorship aspirants)
specifically maintained that Wike, who
hails from the same ethnic group with
the incumbent governor, should withdraw
from the race. They also called on the
National Working Committee of the
party to intervene in the crisis rocking
the state PDP over the ‘no zoning’
stance of the party. To the aggrieved
governorship aspirants, the ‘no zoning’
stance of the party at the state level
was to unduly favour Wike.
Speaking at the rally, one of the
aspirants, Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs,
explained that the issue of zoning was
non-negotiable, adding that the PDP had
been practising rotation of power in
Rivers since 1999. Lulu-Briggs argued
that if Governor Seriake Dickson of
Bayelsa State would not be able to
succeed President Goodluck Jonathan as
President in 2019, it would be wrong for
an Ikwerre person to succeed Mr. Rotimi
Amaechi as the Rivers State governor.
He decried the move by the hierarchy of
the state PDP to stop the rally,
maintaining that one of the reasons for
organising the rally was to express their
support for President Jonathan.
Another aspirant, Sampson Ngerebara,
who spoke before the December 8, 2014
governorship primary of the state PDP,
said it was wrong for Wike to take the
credit for projecting President Jonathan
in the state, adding that he was also
involved in the mobilisation of support
for the President through the
Grassroots Development Initiative.
“The question they ask us in Abuja is
that where were you when Nyesom Wike
was fighting for Jonathan. But I was
part of the GDI and it was wrong to say
Wike alone fought for Goodluck Jonathan.
The cardinal point of the GDI was to
mobilise support for GEJ and we were all
involved in this. But today, one man
(Wike) wants to take all the credit
alone. Today, one person is talking about
Ikwerre-North and Ikwerre-South, but
we will not allow that to be part of our
political lexicon. It takes a good follower
to be a good leader. We understand the
meaning of politics and let nobody take
us for a ride.”
Reacting, the Secretary-General of the
GDI, Mr. Samuel Nwanosike, explained
that Wike was not worried about the
move against him, maintaining that the
PDP would support any aspirant that
emerged as the governorship candidate.
He said, “It shows clearly what we have
been saying in time past that these are
people sponsored by Governor Rotimi
Amaechi. You can see that all their
aspersions were not against Amaechi, but
against the PDP. You can imagine about
27 persons coming to discuss one man
(Wike). Nevertheless, the issue of what
happened in Akwa Ibom and the situation
in Rivers State are different. The PDP
in Rivers State is the opposition and we
must present the best candidate and
the party has said that we must discard
zoning to achieve this.”
Wike, who also responded to the position
of the aggrieved governorship aspirants,
argued that he had the right to contest
the governorship position of the state,
adding that those angling for him to be
disqualified were unfair to him. He
stated that the aggrieved 16
governorship aspirants were not
prepared for the local government and
ward congresses. The former minister
pointed out that rather than embark on
campaigns for the governorship position,
the 16 aspirants decided to organise a
rally against his aspiration with the
belief that President Jonathan would
endorse one of them.
In all these, the wife of the President,
Mrs. Patience Jonathan, had repeatedly
expressed her unflinching support for
Wike’s governorship aspiration. Mrs.
Jonathan’s support added an impetus to
the former minister’s bid for the
position of the governor. Speaking at the
burial ceremony of Senator Tari Sekibo
in Okrika, she expressed the confidence
that Wike would be the next governor of
the state. The remark was her second
public endorsement of Wike to be the
next chief executive of the state.
“Before you today is the next governor
of Rivers State. He is the former
Minister of State for Education,
Barrister Nyesom Wike. The PDP is the
best party and the most popular party
in the country. The PDP is the leading
party that will win Rivers State,” Mrs.
Jonathan, who was addressing Okirika
Council of Chiefs at the event, said.
According to her, she will continue to
stand by those committed to the
inclusive development of the people of
the state and not leaders who insist on
emasculating other groups through
policies that will displace them. The
position of the President’s wife on
Wike’s aspiration did not go down well
with the aggrieved governorship
aspirants, whose visit to Abuja to
convince the national leadership of the
PDP to disqualify Wike was not
successful.
However, the overheated atmosphere
within the state PDP appears to have
calmed as the Chairman, Elders
Reconciliation Committee of the State
PDP, Brig. Gen. Woriboye Iruenabere
(retd.), said the team had met with
most of the aggrieved governorship
aspirants on the need to bury the
hatchet and join the party to achieve
victory in the forthcoming poll.
Iruenabere, who spoke in Port Harcourt,
explained that apart from the
governorship aspirants, the committee
had also met with aggrieved elders of
the party, adding that the outcome of
the meetings was encouraging.
“In view of the foregoing, this
committee was constituted independent
of the ongoing efforts by the party
leadership to facilitate genuine
reconciliation in order to bring about
brotherly love and understanding to the
PDP fold in Rivers State before the end
of 2014. We are aware that several
individuals and groups passionately
canvassed for power shift in the
governance of the state based on the
principles of equity, fairness and justice,
including some of us who are in this
committee today,” Iruenabere added.
He disclosed that some of the aggrieved
members of the party, including the
governorship aspirants, had already
embraced the reconciliatory efforts of
the leadership of the party and urged
members to realise that no sacrifice was
too much to make in the interest of the
party, the re-election of President
Goodluck Jonathan; the victory of the
PDP governorship candidate in the state
and other candidates of the party.






http://www.punchng.com/politics/2015-pdp-mends-fence-in-rivers/

Good

noted

I stopped online politics the moment APC lost all 16 LGA in ekiti state.