The Senator representing Rivers South East senatorial district in the National Assembly, Senator Magnus Abe, has clarified that the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State was plunged into crisis because some powerful individuals disregarded the law.
Abe stated this while addressing a stakeholders meeting in Gokona Local Government Area of Rivers State on Monday.
He said contrary to speculations in some quarters that the primaries were the cause of the crisis in the party, the real issues were that Rivers APC has a peculiar issue different from the rest of the country.
Abe, who leads a faction of the APC in the state, restated that he would remain in the party and fight for justice, saying it was a promise he made to the people of his senatorial district and his supporters across the state.
Abe said: “There are three Senatorial Districts in this state. You have Rivers East, you have Rivers West and you have Rivers South-East. Since the creation of Rivers State, Rivers East had produced Governors, both civilian and military. Rivers West had produced Governors, civilian governors and military governors. Rivers South-East has never produced a governor and we agreed in the All Progressives Congress (APC) that the position of the governor of Rivers State should be zoned to Rivers South-East Senatorial District; that was what we agreed. Rivers South-East Senatorial District cannot be different from other senatorial districts, so we will fight for justice in that respect.
“The second thing I want to say is that we were all here in Rivers State when the crisis in the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is our party started and the origin of the crisis was that people said, anybody who want to follow Senator Abe should leave the party and everybody, every leader who does not agree that Senator Abe will become his enemy must leave the party. And we said that that is not in the constitution of the party; is not written in the APC constitution, is not written in the Nigeria constitution. We will not leave the party, because we built the APC, it wasn’t built by ghost.
“So we are here and we will not leave the party; it is our party. The party is a vehicle for the actualisation of justice, for bringing about the dreams of the people of Nigeria and that is why we joined it. So having joined the party, we must fight for the actualisation of our dreams; we must fight for change in Nigeria and fight for change in Rivers State. That is why we joined APC; so we are here.
“So, when the congresses were organised, members of the APC in Rivers State, we had a meeting, all of us had a meeting of all the leaders. It was the first time that we were sitting together across the divide; whether you are with Abe, you are with Amaechi, you are with anybody.
“We all sat together. And we agreed on how we will handle the congresses to keep the party together, where everybody will have an even chance to participate in the activities of the party. We had that meeting and we agreed. Chief Ikanya called the meeting, we even set up a technical committee to go and put that agreement into action. As soon as the Minister for Transportation landed in Port Harcourt, he carried all the things that we decided together and threw it into the trash-can. He took the congresses to INTELs and said that all those who do not agree with him are out.
“Members of the APC who had already paid their money to the party for the right to participate in the congresses were denied something as simple as form. What is form? They were not allowed and they ran to Court. So the problem in Rivers State is not the same with any other problem in Nigeria. It is not a problem about primary. So when you people sit down and read in the paper; they say those who took the party to court over primary, they will expel them; it has nothing to do with the problem in Rivers State.”
He said despite the intervention of the court some party leaders in the state went ahead “in the night to go and conduct another set of voided and voidable and illegal and unacceptable lot of congresses” without resolving the outstanding issues."
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