2027: APC’ll win Rivers convincingly with or without Amaechi’s group – Okocha
The caretaker chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers state, Sir Tony Okocha, has alleged a plot to hijack the party in the state with a view to subordinating it to the state government as part of a broader design to frustrate the re-election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027.
The APC chieftain, however, declared that his party, like it did in 2023 presidential election, would win Rivers convincingly.
According to him, APC Rivers will never go back to the social club status that it used to be.
Okocha was responding to a Rivers state High Court’s Monday judgement that sacked him and reinstated Emeka Beke as chairman.
On Thursday, the APC National Working Committee rose from a meeting, declaring that the Okocha-led Caretaker Committee of the party remained the only recognised administrative body of the party in the state.
Speaking with newsmen at the APC national secretariat in Abuja, Okocha said Emeka Beke and one Barrister Iheanyichukwu Dike, who are loyal to a former governor of the state, Rotimi Amaechi, had long been suspended from the State Working Committee (SWC) over alleged anti-party activities.
He said the APC was never part of the said suit and that only its national chairman, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, was listed, adding that it was, therefore, wrong for the trial judge to have made orders on parties who were never joined in the suit.
He said, “Beke was imposed on the APC in Rivers state. I was a member, an ally of Senator Magnus Abe, when he was fighting right inside the APC. The reason we fought was ineptitude, political high-handedness and imposition. Beke was a product of these three issues, but was imposed by the then APC leader, Rotimi Amaechi.
“The truth of the matter is that the party has a lot of intellectuals, professionals and lecturers. We imagine how a person of lowly academic qualifications can preside over a meeting that some of us would attend, but the APC leader then said they wanted somebody who had a street-boy mentality. But the truth was that he wanted a surrogate, a stooge who would do his bidding. We fought, but the APC leader was then a minister and his vestiges were here as leaders of the party.
“At the presidential primaries of the APC, Beke was the person who led the Rivers’ delegation of 56 delegates to vote for Rotimi Amaechi. That was how they scored 56 from the state.
“There is an intention to throw up Amaechi’s man and then he (Amaechi) becomes the APC leader and then use the APC to fight Mr. President in 2027. We will never allow that.”
Continuing, he said, “Beke has shot himself in the leg by also referring to Amaechi as leader of the party in Rivers and the South-south – A man who refused to cooperate with President Tinubu then as presidential candidate; a man who worked for the opposition. Amaechi and his group aligned with PDP’s Atiku while Wike and his group from the PDP worked with us. He is the same person who warned our secretary to never invite him for any APC meeting.
“As far as we are concerned, this is the court of first instance and we had known the end from the beginning. If we had known the end from the beginning, why should we be perturbed by that court judgement? We knew and that was why we went ahead with our programmes, the solidarity rally for Mr. President.
“We are in court. We are law-abiding. At our level, even when a judgement is gotten from the toilet, we will abide by it. But we have applied to the Court of Appeal for a stay-of-execution and an invalidation of that judgement. We are not fighting physically. We will use the law and we are ready to go the whole hug to the Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court had ruled before that the courts should not meddle in the internal affairs of the party. The task of picking a party chairman is an internal affair of the party.”
