Rivers APC: Abe Plead With Amaechi, Calls For Unity

APC chieftain, Senator Magnus Abe, has called on the minister of transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and other top officials of the party in Rivers State to allow peace reign in the party.

The former senator representing Rivers South-East Senatorial District said that no member of the party is indispensable in the state.

Abe in a statement through his spokesperson, Parry Saroh Benson, noted that the party can only rise above its present predicament if all hands are on deck.

He called on party members to desist from throw shades at each other as this will not make the party move forward.

The former lawmaker in the statement wrote: “I believe that any sensible politician who understands politics and can see where the APC in Rivers State is today after all the sacrifices that members have made over the years, would be very unhappy and I am very, very unhappy.”

“We need peace in the party and if we can change our language and stop talking the way we do, do things differently, we can have different results.”

“I have been circumspect about my choice of words when talking about Rotimi Amaechi and have said it over and over again that he is the leader of the party. But, a leader must lead in such a manner that your supporters and followers can have confidence in the leadership. Leadership should not be designed to hurt anybody or group.”

“As far as the party is concerned, we need to bring everybody together, even Senator Andrew Uchendu, if only he will behave like an elder. We cannot be chasing one another in the public. He was my colleague at the National Assembly.”

“We sat together at the Senate and common decency demands that there are certain things we should not say about one another in the public. That decency he cannot respect.”

He noted that if top members of the party can change their behaviours, curtail the excesses of their supporters, the party will be united again.

“If we can change our behaviour, rearrange our ways, curtail the excesses of our supporters, the party will unite again as one indivisible group.”

While speaking on Senator Andrew Uchendu’s request that they should renounce their ambitions for the progress of the party, he said: “I am ready to do whatever we need to do to bring the party together, but if the foundation of the peace is that Senator Abe should announce that he has no ambition, I will not make that announcement. In the same vein, I will not sit here to say whether I will contest or not, that question is for the future.”

“People supported me for governorship because they could see that I was close to the fruit and if given a little push, I can catch it and they thronged behind me, if tomorrow am not in a good position and somebody else is better positioned, I will support that person”.

Contrary to the claim of Senator Andrew Uchendu that he was personally present at a meeting in Amaechi’s house where Senator Abe claimed that he was the greatest investment of Rotimi Amaechi, Abe said: “That statement was made at the heat of the crisis, at a rally in my village. The pictures are there. What I had on paper was that Amaechi is our biggest investment in politics in Nigeria but when it came to the time to say it, I decided not to say it that way because I was looking for peace.”

“I felt that, If I say it that way, I felt it was too challenging and contentious to the man who was my governor and boss, so I switched it around because I wanted to appeal to his sense of humanity that you cannot build a house and destroy it.”

“So I said, listen, I am your biggest investment, in order words, don’t destroy what you have built. We supported Amaechi. We have helped one another and we are all friends.”

He noted that the whole problem started following the disobedience to court orders that led to the face-off between the Rivers APC and the Nigerian judiciary.

“The origin of this whole problem was the disobedience to Court orders that brought the face-off between Rivers APC and the Nigerian judiciary. It has nothing to do with a third party. It has to do with the behaviour of the people in the party.”

“Wike was the governor of the State in 2016 during the senatorial rerun, he fought us to a point that, nobody was campaigning but I was campaigning and I won, the whole country knows that but Uchendu did not win he had to go to court. If Wike is that invincible, how did we win?”

“If you are living in an area that is close to earthquakes, you don’t go and build your house with bamboo sticks because at the slightest shake of the ground the sticks will fall apart. We know that we have a formidable political opponent with a large war chest in Rivers State.”

He called on party members to build a structure that his strong enough to defeat Wike and his structure in the state.

“We must build a structure that will overcome him because if our structure is not strong enough to overcome him, then everything they are shouting Wike, Wike this and Wike that, do you need Wike to cooperate with you before you win”?

“Senator Andrew Uchendu has no ambition to sacrifice because at about eighty years, he cannot win another election. More so, he had earlier publicly promised the people of Etche in 2015 that he will contest only one term only for him to return to Etche in 2019 claiming that the leadership ordered him to go back.”

“A man who had no balls to defend his own public position before the people of Etche cannot be trusted with power anymore”.