By : Romanus Onyenaucheya
Senator representing Rivers South East, Magnus Ngei Abe succinctly situated the origin of the crisis that has torn the Rivers State chapter of the APC down the middle while speaking to stakeholders at Gokana Local Government Area, during the week.
As he elucidated, the lingering problem is a fallout of the former Governor and Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi’s willingness to foist his chosen governorship candidate for the 2019 general elections on the party.
True, the disagreement would not have deteriorated into a rampaging imbroglio if Amaechi had stated in 2014 that he would not support an Ogoni as his successor. He statements and body movement indicated that Senator Abe was in pole position to earn the gubernatorial ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2015 general elections.
As governor, he invited stakeholders from Ogoni, including traditional rulers, chiefs and it’s elites to government house, Port Harcourt, and assured them that he will support the quest of the Ogoni’s to produce the next governor. The Ogonis who comprise of Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme local government areas have not produced a governor 50 years after the creation of Rivers State.
Among the three Senatorial Districts in the state, Rivers East and Rivers West have both produced governors. Rivers South East, represented by Senator Abe has not produced a governor. In the storm that enveloped the administration of former Governor Amaechi in 2014, Abe stood, stolidly, beside Amaechi.
He was instrumental to the 7th National Assembly taking over, temporarily as it were, the legislative functions of the Rivers State House of Assembly, to forestall six rebellious members of the House from instigating an impeachment of Amaechi. Abe was said to have spoken with so much passion with watery eyes that good conscience prevailed and Amaechi’s second tenure was given a respite by the National Assembly.
There were pressures, too, on Abe to defect to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) after Amaechi decamped in November 5, 2014, with his commissioners, aides and a regiment of those who got political appointments in his administration. He was also assured that the South East Senatorial District will be reserved for him.
Senator Abe declined and quietly turned down all the political overtures from the PDP which was then in-charge at the centre. As it turned out, while Abe was working assiduously to consolidate Amaechi’s political tentacles in the state, Amaechi was, conversely, plotting to diminish Abe’s chances in earning the APC governorship ticket in Rivers State.
Governor Nyesom Wike, then a minister of state for education, and much later a supervising minister of education, had gone to Senator Abe’s residence in Abuja to intimate him of his willingness to leave Amaechi’s political family. Abe had pleaded with Wike. But Wike surprised him when he told him “you will be Amaechi’s next victim.”
While Wike was the engine room of Amaechi’s government, Abe was the undisputed brain box and pacifier during political storms which came in droves. On the behest of Abe’s untiring efforts in supporting Amaechi’s totling administration the Ogonis felt that Amaechi will honour his pledge to ensure an Ogoni was his successor.
But the hopes of the Ogoni’s in producing a governor in 2015 was shattered to smithereens when Amaechi summoned a hurried stakeholders meeting at government house, Port Harcourt to proclaim that Dr. Dakuku Peterside, from Opobo in Opobo-Nkoro local government, then a member of the House of Representatives would be the standard-bearer of the APC in 2015.
Senator Abe was present at the meeting. He stood up, congratulated Peterside and drove to his residence. Amaechi’s defence was that the Ogonis did not show enough determination and zeal for the position of governor. Not to be treated so cavalierly, again, Abe went to work early, reaching out to friends and political associates.
Shocked by Senator Abe’s political advancement within and outside the party, Amaechi drove to Abe’s home in Abuja and informed him in the presence of his wife and elder brother not to contemplate running for the governorship of the APC in Rivers State. Amaechi told Abe that his candidate would be Tonye Dele Cole, an architect and businessman.
Abe’s response was that Amaechi should allow all interested applicants vie for nomination while all other aspirants will collapse their campaign structure to support whoever emerged from the governorship primary.
Amaechi regarded Abe’s response as an affront and declared at all APC fora in the state that he will deal with Abe for showing interest in the governorship of the APC after he has asked him to shelve his ambition. So, the question is when is the right time for Abe to actualise his governorship ambition?
Amaechi’s grouse is that Abe has the temerity to aspire to be governor of Rivers State while he, Amaechi, remains the leader of the party in the state. Abe has continually referred to Amaechi as his leader. He continues to refer to Amaechi as his leader even though Amaechi’s media aides have stated that Amaechi is no longer Abe’s leader.
The crux of the matter with the Rivers State APC is Amaechi’s unwillingness to see Senator Abe emerge as the governor of the state under the aegis of the APC. Consequently, all members of the party who are sympathetic to Abe’s travails in Amaechi’s political cauldron are equally being treated by Amaechi and his supporters as political enemies.
The imbroglio in which the Rivers State APC currently finds itself is self-inflicted. Amaechi personally planned and caused it all. To stop Abe from having access to delegates that will vote for him during the governorship primary, Amaechi hijacked electoral materials meant for congresses in July 2017. He sequestered the party officials from Abuja who were detailed to conduct the congresses at Novotel Hotel, along Ken Saro-Wiwa, formerly Stadium Road. The exercise ended in a fiasco.
Amaechi adopted the same method in May 2018. All applicants who paid the required fee at the designated banks and
secured their tellers were denied the requisite forms that would enable them participate in the ward, local and state congresses. Furious, 23 of the applicants approached a Rivers State high court, on Friday, May 4. They wondered how the congresses could go ahead when they haven’t been given the forms they paid for.
Amaechi’s group still went ahead with the ward congress. An announcement was made on radio at about 3pm, on the day of the election asking those who had paid to come to the venue of the ward congress and participate upon presentation of their tellers. The applicants rejected the announcement, claiming the process was flawed.
On Friday, May 11, the 23 aggrieved applicants among thousands of others, secured an injunctive order from a Rivers State high court, restraining the APC from conducting the local government and state congresses. The court further said that the outcome of the flawed Saturday, May 5, ward congress is unknown to law, Amaechi’s group, privies and agents having been properly served.
Determined to have the congresses conducted even while there was a subsisting matter in court, Amaechi’s group went to the Court of Appeal to set aside the existing injunction and conducted ward, local government and state congresses on May 19, May 20 and 21, respectively.
However, on Thursday, October 30, the high court in Rivers State nullified the ward, local government and state congresses, asserting that the process that produced the candidates was defective in law and as such the outcome was thoroughly flawed.
Unhappy with the setting aside of the restraining order of the high court by the Court of Appeal on whose strength the Amaechi group conducted the May 19, 20 and 21 ward, local government and state congresses, the 23 aggrieved aspirants approached the Supreme Court for an interpretation of the judicial reasoning of the Court of Appeal on the injunctive order granted by the lower court.
The Supreme Court in its judgment on October 22, affirmed the position of the lower court and set aside the order of the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court maintained that the ward, local government and state congresses conducted on May 19, 20 and 21 were defective in law.
The fellow who emerged as chairman of the Rivers State Chapter of the APC, Ojukaye Flag-Amachree, initially said he remained the authentic chairman of the party in Rivers State. He even added that he had earlier secured a perpetual injunction from an Abuja high court restraining the national chairman of the APC from dissolving his state executive.
A few days later, National Chairman of the APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, told journalists in Abuja that from the first page to the last page of the Supreme Court judgement, the Justices frowned at the procedure with which the ward, local government and state congresses were conducted. “Therefore the APC will conduct fresh ward local government and state congresses in Rivers State.”
Amaechi’s group has appealed the judgment of the lower court which was affirmed by the Supreme Court. Because the appeal by the Amaechi group is subsisting at the Court of Appeal, the name of Tonye Dele Cole and Chief Victor Giadom who emerged as governorship and deputy governorship candidates at the indirect primary conducted by the Amaechi group have been submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC.)
Knowing full well that the judgment of the Court of Appeal will make a loud pronouncement on the legality or otherwise of their candidature, Tonye Dele Cole and his running mate has asked the Court of Appeal to allow them join the subsisting appeal.
In Nigerian Jurisprudence, the Court of Appeal cannot sit to make a pronouncement over a judgment of the Supreme Court. So, it is trite law that the ward, local government and state congresses are in the face of the law defective. The main issue before the Court of Appeal, really, is whether a process that is defective in law; that has disenfranchised thousands of party members can legally elect candidates that will participate in the 2019 general elections?
In this miasma that the Rivers State APC has found itself, Senator Magnus Abe and the other candidates who emerged through direct primary conducted by the Prince Peter Odike state executive which is the only Rivers State administrative organ recognized by law have all approached a federal high court, seeking for an order of Mandamus, asking the national chairman of the APC to submit their names to INEC; and for INEC to receive, accept and publish their names on the strength of the high court and Supreme Court judgements.
It is expected that either the Amaechi group or the Abe group will still head to the Supreme Court on a final judicial pronouncement on whether a process that is defective in law can produce an outcome that is legally acceptable before the law as one cannot build something on nothing.
Another argument is that of indirect and direct primary. Abe’s, group claims the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the APC ordered that Rivers State APC should conduct direct primary because of the rash of court cases. Amaechi’s group maintain that the APC National Working Committee (NWC) directed that Rivers State should choose it’s candidates for elective positions through indirect primary.
Instructively, in Senator Ahmed Makarfi versus Senator Ali Modu-Sherrif, the apex court ruled that the NEC is superior to the NWC. Again, some argue that Amaechi’s indirect primary was observed by INEC officials. Some people in the pro-Abe’s group also claim that the direct primary was also observed by INEC officials and security agencies.
And that since there were no ward, local government and state congresses in the state, party members after being duly verified with their party identity cards voted for candidates of their choice. The pro-Abe group claim that all procedure were carefully documented.
True, the Rivers State APC has through some shambolic power-play dug a very deep hole into which it has fallen. The electoral leverage before it now will be borne out from the court, too. Since the APC meant the deadline in submitting the names of candidates for elective offices, the party may still benefit from the window of substitution if those who emerged through direct primary wins at the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court.
So, the crux of the matter of Rivers APC crises, is not as a fallout of the governorship primary but arrant disobedience for rule of law and the egotism of some powerful individuals whose penchant for power has made them to place ‘me first’ above the ‘people first’ and not perturbed whether the party should end in peace or in pieces.
