Magnus Abe and Rotimi Amaechi

By OKafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

The sharp political difference between Chibuike Amaechi, the former Governor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transport and Senator Magnus Abe, representing Rivers South East in Rivers State blew open recently. Amaechi, who is leader of All Progress Congress, APC in the state restructured the party and removed some heads of the caucuses and axed those allegedly loyal to purported governorship ambition of Abe.

The first to be under Amaechi’s hammer was his former Chief of Staff, Chief Tony Okocha, who was removed as the caucus leader for Obio-Akpor local government area. The others were Mr Wogu Boms, the former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, who was also removed as the leader of Port Harcourt City Local Government area. Hon Chidi Wihioka, member representing Ikwerre/Emohua federal constituency who was replaced as leader of the party’s caucus. Hon Alwell Onyesoh, former Commissioner for Sports for the eight years in the administration of former Governor Peter Odili was also sacked as leader of the party’s caucus in Etche local Government area.

Curiously, those sacked from their various strategic positions are the avowed loyalists of Senator Abe. Amaechi as leader of the party in the state allegedly took the action because those removed were accused of working to ensure that Senator Abe actualised his dream of becoming the governorship flag bearer of the party for the 2019 governorship elections. Amaechi was reported to have vowed that he would put his feet down to do everything possible to frustrate Abe’s purported ambition. He was reported to have insisted in various close door meetings of the stakeholders of the party that he would solely determine who flies the party’s flag in the state.

The question on everybody’s lips is why Amaechi who is the immediate past governor of the state would vow that Abe who had been his political ally predating 1999 could be hell bent in scuttling the ambition of Abe.

Abe was the Minority Leader of the Rivers House of Assembly representing Gokana constituency under the All Peoples party, APP, between 1999 and 2003, while Amaechi was the the Speaker of the House under the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, from 1999 to 2007. Abe later decamped to PDP and was made Commissioner for Information between 2003 and 2007.

At the time Amaechi was denied the chance of becoming the Governor of Rivers after PDP had fielded him as its candidate but later replaced with his cousin Chief Celestine Omeiha as candidate and eventually became governor, Abe was one of those who stoodby with Amaechi during his nine months titanic judicial battle to reclaim his mandate at the Supreme Court.
As reward for his loyalty, Amaechi appointed Abe as Secretary to the Rivers State Government, SSG in his first term.Abe was also in the Senate under PDP during Amaechi’s second term.

Throughout the tortuous battle Amaechi went through in PDP that eventually led to his expulsion from the party, Abe and all the loyalists of the Transport Minister moved with him into the All Progressive Congress, APC, despite all intimidations from the Federal might controlled by former President Goodluck Jonathan and his wife, Dame Patience, with
Nyesom Wike as the anchor man in the state.

In the sojourn in APC, Abe and his Ogoni ethnic nationality had hoped that 2015 was the period for them to produce the Governor of the state and their newly found party,APC,would be the best platform.Their argument was and has been that after 50 years of the existence of the state, no Ogoni man had held the position of Governor, Deputy Governor, Speaker or Chief Judge of the state.

Ogoni people had expected that in Abe and APC their dreams of producing the Governor of the state would have been realised. But their hopes were dashed like packs of cards when through the instrumentality of Amaechi, his former Commissioner for Works, Dr Dakuku Adol Peterside from Opobo Nkoro local government area was picked to fly the governorship flag of the party. Abe and the Ogoni people were back broken. PDP and Wike celebrated what they regarded as a political miscalculation. The rest is history as Wike won at the polls and also defeated Dakuku Peterside at the Supreme Court.

When all the political calculations of Amaechi failed, Abe felt beaten but unbowed. He picked the gauntlet of his political career with the active support of Amaechi and APC; he gunned for the Senate which he won. It is not clear the remote cause of the political rift between Abe and Amaechi that is threatening the foundation of the party in the state besides that fact that Abe is nursing ambition.

Those removed as caucus leaders because they are rooting for Abe’s ambition are not finding it funny. For instance, one of those removed as leader of the party’s caucus in his Obio Akpor government, Chief Tony Okocha, Amaechi’s former Chief of Staff has said that his support for Abe’s gubernatorial for 2019 is unshaken because of his conviction in the qualities of Abe to provide good governance in the state. He said his removal as a caucus leader in his LGA does not change his political convictions.

For Senator Wilson Ake, another APC chieftain who is also accused of tacitly supporting Abe said Abe’s alleged ambition which he not openly declared is tearing APC in the state to its foundations. Ake expressed surprise that Abe had not told anyone publicly of a governorship ambition and wondered why mere suspicion and unverified speculations of someone’s ambition is enough to threaten a once cohesive party that has a bigger monster to fight who is Wike and PDP (presently controlling the huge resources of the state).

Less than 24 hours after Amaechi sacked some caucus leaders of the party allegedly rooting for Senator Magnus Abe’s governorship, the party denounced the so-called sacks as “fake news” and non-existent.

In a swift reaction, the party in the state through Dr.Davies Ikanya, State Chairman of APC, said the story about some APC leaders being sacked by Amaechi is false.

The visible signs that the crisis in APC as it surrounds the disagreement between Abe and Amaechi, the former Governor, nosedived Sunday, July 2 as the Senator held his own rally in his Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers, to counter the one earlier held by the Minister of Transportation a few weeks ago in Gokana, the senator’s council area.
Amaechi had held a rally in Gokana to puncture Abe’s popularity and shore up his foothold on the party structure as the leader of APC in the state and put Abe in his place as a follower.

Abe who was earlier received by his loyalists and members of his political group, Kairos Mas, at the Port Harcourt International Airport, revealed the real reasons behind the crises in the Rivers State Chapter of APC and made it clear that nobody is disputing Amaechi’s leadership of the party in the state.

According to Abe,”We are not disputing with Amaechi over who is the leader of the APC in Rivers State, but that there are issues in the party, which is that people are saying that the ambition of Senator Magnus Abe to be governor is the problem in the Party and that they have asked Senator Abe to wait, let us build the party and Senator Abe refused to wait,he said he must be governor and it is scattering the party. I want to stand in front of my people to say to you, that story is not the truth.

“People have said we got the ticket to go to the Senate, to become whatever we want to be because the leader said so, and therefore the leader will continue to say who will be what and what and everybody will wait until the leader says what will be what. And anybody who is saying anything different is a bad member of the Party, the person should be removed and … we are saying No.” The Senator said he would not leave the APC for anybody because he is today the “biggest investment of Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in the Politics of Nigeria”.

According to Abe,”I am the only returning Senator in the entire South East and South South and there is nothing that will make me leave the Party”.

Interestingly, supporters of Senator Abe have been swelling in rank as they accused Amaechi of not recognising that the Senator is the only political asset the party has to fight and upstage Governor Wike ahead of 2019 governorship election.

Abe’s supporters argue that the Rivers So. Senator Abe is from Ogoniland. For over 50 years that the state was created, no Ogoni has ever been made a Governor, Deputy Governor, Speaker of the state House of Assembly and Chief Judge. Magnus Abe got his election upheld by the National and State House of Assembly election Petition Tribunal sitting in Apo Abuja after the Petition by the Senator Olaka Nwogu of the PDP was dismissed.

Observers of Rivers politics are alleging that Amaechi’s ‘fear’ about Abe becoming Governor is that he would not be able to control him. Some claim that Abe is stubborn and very independent minded and may not be loyal to Amaechi as a political “godson”, when he realises his ambition.

The question on the lips of political observers are,why would Abe and Amaechi’s differences tear the fragile party apart ahead of 2019 now that PDP is rallying back to reckoning after the Senator Ahmed Makarfi has won as the authentic national leader of PDP?