Today, I want to deposit my thoughts about the grand deception going on in Rivers APC as objectively as I can. It’s called “I stand with Amaechi”. By the time I finish, our leader CRA and indeed all open minded readers should be able to know whether or not anybody is actually standing with the Minister of Transportation.
I will start with a brief background information that is already an open secret. A few months ago, CRA jolted Rivers APC stakeholders when he threatened that if Magnus Abe and Dakuku Peterside didn’t stop building support bases for themselves, he would bring Tonye Cole and dash him the governorship ticket of the Rivers APC in 2019 whether anybody liked it or not. The Minister has gone further to mean that statement he made. He has already told friends and associates that he wants to create a political empire that will last for decades by becoming the “Bola Tinubu of Rivers State” by unilaterally installing a “technocratic governor” in 2019 that will run the government while he will control the politics of who gets what in the government. The Minister fantasizes that after Tonye Cole’s eight years, he will also create another proxy Governor that will maintain the chain of his political empire in Rivers State.
As a matter of fact, that thought of building a political empire that will perpetually do obeisance to him actually wasn’t conceived today. That was the reason he handpicked Dakuku Peterside to run on the ticket of the APC in 2015. Shockingly, in that same meeting he unveiled his newest political godson in Tonye Cole, he tore Dakuku Peterside into pieces with his stinging verbal assault when he declared his former poster boy as “a very weak person who cannot lead any fight, a man who is not ready to be Governor and who would have shut me out of Government House had he succeeded in the 2015 Governorship election”. And that was said in the presence of bewildered bigwigs of Rivers APC in an enlarged stakeholders’ meeting!
Let’s go back to the main gist. Armed with the background information above, what did you expect those who “stand with Amaechi” to do?
Let’s start from those on social media. I expected those “standing with Amaechi” on social media to begin to profile Tonye Cole on the internet by telling Rivers people his background, his leadership qualities and why the possibility of becoming a governor is something that is well within his capacity to handle considering that Tonye Cole is not known to more than 90 percent of voters in Rivers State.
But what did the “standers with Amaechi” do? They started by spinning narratives that they longer belonged to APC but to “CRA party”. When that didn’t sell, they stepped up the game by running with the hashtag “#IstandWithAmaechi”. When that proved inefficacious, they graduated to another hashtag “#Hechi Hechi Hechi Hechi. When that didn’t cut it, they started branding certain persons as “betrayers of Amaechi”, and when that proved unreasonable they formed a group that has since struggled with identity till date called INCRA. When they were asked what INCRA meant, they first said it was Ikwerre Network for CRA, when they were asked if CRA had been degraded into a local ethnic champion, they said INCRA meant Ijaw Network for CRA. When that sounded queer, they said INCRA was Igbo Network for CRA, when they were questioned when Amaechi became an Igbo man, they changed the name to Inter-Ethnic Network for CRA. And pray, what does CRA need an Inter-ethnic network for? Is he planning to run against Muhammadu Buhari in 2019?
That is not even the issue. The issue is that till date, members of the group have not for a single day showcased Tonye Cole to Rivers people in obedience to CRA. Instead, individually, they have started writing long articles to make a horrible argument why, like a carry over course, Dakuku Peterside should be handed the governorship ticket in 2019 to compensate for his failure in 2015. In other words, the group standing with Amaechi is at the same time disagreeing with him over the contentious 2019 topic in Rivers State. In essence, INCRA is no more than a Dakuku group dishonestly disguising what it stands for, and deceiving only themselves in the process.
The second group I want to talk about are the people that make up what is called the APC stakeholders. Take it from me, there is hardly a single stakeholder in Rivers APC who is standing with Amaechi on the 2019 ticket question. All the stakeholders have already made up their minds as to the persons they prefer to fly the party’s ticket in the coming election.
A few of the Rivers stakeholders still support Dakuku. They are mostly those who are getting one contracts or the other from NIMASA. They are the people I call the Dakuku group. They are having meetings here are there everyday in defiance of the order of CRA that all such meetings should stop. Rivleaf, an apparatus of the Dakuku Group, is also having meetings in defiance of the ban CRA placed on the group. It doesn’t matter what Amaechi thinks, this group wants the APC 2019 ticket to be handed to Dakuku for another round of merry go round.
The third set of people I want to talk about are the Magnus Abe group. Majority of the Rivers APC stakeholders are members of this group. The Magnus Abe group got the spark when CRA himself declared Magnus Abe for governor 2019 in a stakeholders meeting held at the DOME, Port Harcourt. It happened that in a bid to curtail the influence of Magnus Abe, Amaechi had publicly declared that he went to Abe’s house in Abuja to ask him to stop his ambition to be Governor of Rivers State but Abe had told him that he would run in 2019 since Amaechi was no longer eligible. Magnus Abe who was present in that meeting shouted a big amen much to admiration of the audience after CRA technically declared him for governor.
Members of the Abe group too have been meeting, organizing networks and groups against the order of CRA that no group should meet. In fact, there is a well coordinated media group called KAIROS MEDIA GROUP that has been reportedly set up by an Aide to Senator Abe. KAIROS Mas has been dishing out very intelligent releases and using the social media to muster support for Magnus Abe from all parts of the world.
One good thing about KAIROS though, is that the group didn’t pretend or hide under any person to prosecute their objective which is what the INCRA people appear to be doing. KAIROS made it clear in their inaugural statement that they were going to call on Magnus Abe to present himself for the 2019 Governorship race in Rivers State. That sincerity and courage is commendable. The group has been making positive waves everywhere.
From the foregoing, who is actually standing with Amaechi in truth? Is it the Dakuku group that is pretending to obey CRA yet organizing and creating networks for the benefit of Dakuku’s Governorship even when Amaechi has publicly branded Dakuku a weak man? Or is it INCRA that is hiding behind the name of Amaechi to organize for Dakuku in 2019? Or is it that Magnus Abe group that has come openly to go for what they want, hoping that Amaechi will see where majority opinion is headed?
The #IStandWithAmaechi mantra is merely an expression that has no validity in the actions of people who profess it. You be the judge.
