The role played in the recent general election by the two principal characters of Rivers politics, former Governor Nyesom Wike and his predecessor, Rotimi Amaechi may alter the structure of the two dominant parties in the key Southsouth state.

The future of the Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as presently constituted is bleak. The party has been choked and may breathe its last under the leadership of a former governor and immediate past Minister of Transport, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.

In retrospect, since Amaechi emerged as the APC leader in Rivers during its formative stage in 2014, APC has never fared well. Despite being the ruling party in the state in 2015, following his defection, with his loyalists, to the APC, the party lost the governorship election to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).

Chief Nyesom Wike led the onslaught that dislodged Amaechi and the party from the seat of power in Port Harcourt in 2015. Wike who was then a Minister of State for Education emerged as the governor following massive support from the then President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration.

Wike did not just lead the PDP to victory at the governorship poll he also ensured that despite the bloody nose that his party suffered at the centre, it won the presidential election massively in the state. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd), who won the 2015 presidential election on the platform of the APC, did not secure the constitutionally required 25 per cent votes in Rivers. It was appalling that as governor and Director-General of the Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organisation, Amaechi could not deliver reasonable votes in Rivers to Buhari.

Many people believe that the emergence of Wike as the governor and the leadership style of Amaechi were the twin factors that undermined the growth of the APC in Rivers State. While Amaechi became Minister of Transportation in the Buhari administration, Wike reigned supreme as a first-term governor in Rivers. Wike not only united the PDP in Rivers, but he also expanded the party’s territories and ensured that a sense of oneness of purpose permeated the party. He forgave persons, who offended him and poached political bigwigs from Amaechi’s pond.

Wike deployed consultation and compromise to unite the party. But, he was equally dictatorial in his dealings with members of the party. He made offers that were irresistible and enforced loyalty among party members. As a result, the PDP dominated all nooks and crannies of the state.

But, under Amaechi as a minister, the Rivers State chapter of the APC became a disunited, disillusioned, and rudderless party. Amaechi was seen as an unforgiving, intolerant, autocratic, and all-knowing master. He kept malice with party leaders, who disagreed with him and treated such individuals with unimaginable resentment. There was little or no move to genuinely reconcile aggrieved APC members, expand the party and make it a virile opposition to the PDP. Therefore, the APC lost a lot of weight and became politically lean meat.

The party was a house divided against itself. The division reached its peak during the buildup to the 2019 general election. Amaechi could not resolve his differences with notable APC stalwarts, such as Senator Magnus Abe. Abe led another faction of the party in a legal tussle that stopped all candidates of the APC, including its governorship candidate, Tonye Cole from contesting the 2019 election.

Amaechi was accused of imposing Cole on members of the party without consultation. It was believed that Amaechi’s unyielding stance on Cole stirred the crisis that buried the APC in 2019. Amaechi played into the hands of Wike, who stoked a fire in the APC and profited from Amaechi’s mistakes. Despite all other political gimmicks deployed by Amaechi to outsmart Wike, the 2019 election without the APC on the ballot was a walkover for the governor. Wike also ensured that Amaechi despite being a minister and Buhari’s campaign DG for the second time did not secure the constitutionally required 25 per cent votes for Buhari in Rivers. The notorious ‘lion of Ubima’ became a political duck in a state where he was once a commando.

After the 2019 election, the APC continued to nurse its wounds. The party’s disunity widened like a gulf as members raised discordant tunes in almost all matters. A seeming order crept into the party after the resolutions of most of the legal matters between Amaechi’s faction and Abe’s bloc. But, Abe’s group continued to unsettle the Amaechi’s camp in Rivers by raising legal issues in almost all party affairs executed by Amaechi in the APC

Again, the formation of a new executive committee, the state working committee, after many years of fragmentation and leadership tussle ahead of the 2023 elections, stirred bad blood. Amaechi was accused of imposing his associate, Chief Emeka Beke in October 2021 as the state chairman of the party and selecting only members from his camp to form the state working committee.

Under Beke, the party continued to linger in protracted dispute as the executive committee could not unite the Rivers APC. Abe and his group continued to advance their disagreements with Amaechi and his Beke leadership. Beke also raised the alarm in many fora over what he described as the neglect of the party by the national leadership.

The 2023 general election further split the party into different camps. First, the key actors in Amaechi’s camp disagreed with his disposition towards the governorship primary which again produced Cole as the party’s governorship candidate in Rivers. Like Cole, almost all the aspirants and pillars of the APC hail from the riverine part of the state.

Although Amaechi constituted a committee comprising 19 wise elders with a mandate to select a consensus candidate from among all the aspirants, most of the contestants believed that such a move was an afterthought designed to legitimise Amaechi’s already anointed candidate. The aspirants signed an agreement to work with whoever emerged as the party’s flag bearer from among them. But they later spurned the agreement when they discovered that the process was unfair and deliberately orchestrated to ensure the emergence of Cole.

Therefore, most of them abandoned the APC to pursue their ambitions in other parties. Abe left to become the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Dawari George flew the flag of the Action Alliance (AA), while Chief Dumo Lulu-Briggs became the governorship candidate of the Accord Party. As a result, the APC was polarised ahead of that election and it accounted for its woeful performance at the poll.

Analysts further blamed the current sorry state of the party in Rivers on the unyielding stance of Amaechi ahead of the presidential primary. Amaechi was said to have been deceived into thinking that he was former President Buhari’s anointed candidate for the party’s presidential ticket. He was a frontline contender, but he eventually suffered a humiliating defeat at the in-house poll. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu defeated him by a wide margin and went ahead to win the poll against all odds.

Candidly, observers believe that there was nothing wrong with Amaechi contesting the presidential primary since it was within his constitutional right. The only problem was that he did not realise when it was time as a party man to throw in the towel and support the winner. Though Tinubu after his emergence paid solidarity visits to other contestants, including Amaechi to seek their support, the former minister was among a few others, who vowed not to support him.

Amaechi allowed whatever political differences that existed between him and the Tinubu’s camp to negatively affect his sense of judgment. He refused to work for the victory of Tinubu and his decision affected the Rivers APC structures, whose leaders toed his path. While Amaechi and others were said to have worked for the presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, others in his camp were said to have supported the Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Obi.

Again, Wike saw the lacuna in the state chapter of APC, analysed the winning credentials of Tinubu, and decided to fill the gap in the state. Working with other APC members led by Tony Okocha, who disagreed with Amaechi and his state party structure, Wike began to secretly sensitise his party leaders on why they should deliver Tinubu at the poll.

Wike’s war against Atiku; his adamant call for the resignation of the then National Chairman of PDP, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, and his insistence on power rotation to the South fuelled his secret campaign vibes for Tinubu. The former governor formulated a winning strategy for Tinubu and for the first time since 1999 ensured that a presidential candidate of another party outside the PDP became victorious in the oil-rich state.

For his support for Tinubu, a candidate outside his party, Wike has been granted the privilege of emerging as a minister-designate from an opposition party, the PDP. His emergence as a minister to represent Rivers in Tinubu’s incoming cabinet appears to have ended the relevance of the current APC leadership structure in the state.

Already, a fresh leadership crisis has reared its ugly head in Rivers APC as Okocha led other disgruntled members of the party to challenge the state leadership of Amaechi in Rivers. Hitherto, Okocha in many of his public utterances has tried to woo Wike to the APC and begged him to come and lead the party. On why Wike deserved the ministerial appointment, Okocha, who led the Independent Campaign Council (ICC) for Tinubu in Rivers said: “While Wike provided the needed support to aid Tinubu’s victory in Rivers State, I was the person, who coordinated such efforts as the chairman of the Logistics and Protocol Committee of the Presidential Campaign Council and member of the council in Rivers State.

“I want to say authoritatively that without the active support and direction of Wike, Tinubu would have lost Rivers State to Peter Obi of the Labour Party. Without any iota of doubt, Wike played more than 70 per cent of the role that gave rise to Tinubu’s success in Rivers State.

“There is no gainsaying the fact that Wike was the game-changer in Rivers State for Tinubu’s victory in the presidential election. That is why we urge President Tinubu to ignore any other aspirant for the ministerial slot for Rivers State and give it to no other person than Nyesom Wike as a reciprocation of his role during the presidential poll.

“It is through the active role and support of Wike that Rivers State voted massively for Tinubu and went ahead to elect a PDP governor, produce three senators, 12 out of the 13 members of the House of Representatives and 32 members of the state House of Assembly in Rivers State.”

Okocha while calling on Wike to defect to the APC and lead the party in Rivers said: “It does appear to us that the national leadership of the PDP does not appreciate the influence, the pedigree that is embedded in Wike. So we are asking and calling on Wike to come over to the APC and lead us.”

With the turbulence in PDP, there is every indication that Wike having emerged as a minister-designate will lead all the structures of the PDP, including Governor Siminalayi Fubara, to the APC in the nearest future. Observers believe that the current leadership of the APC in Rivers under Amaechi will be displaced by the Wike-led PDP structures whose defection to the APC appears imminent.

Analysts believe that Amaechi and the remnants of Rivers APC will later join Atiku in the PDP in what may be the most interesting and most dramatic defection in the country’s political history. (The Nation)

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