Certain chieftains of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the Rivers State chapter have accused the National Secretariat of the party and Bola Tinubu administration of offering them the short end of the stick.
The party chieftains led by its governorship candidate in the last general elections, Tonye Cole made the allegation on Tuesday at a session with members of the APC National Working Committee led by its Chairman, Abdullahi Ganduje.
Cole who read a prepared speech, titled, ” We stand before History,” recalled that as a result of the internal dissension within the party in 2018, which led to litigations, it could not field candidates in the 2019 general elections.
Cole further recalled that efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2023 governorship elections in Rivers State was sabotaged as the party national secretariat withdrew as a petitioner. He also alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission denied the Rivers State chapter access to relevant documents to back its petition.
The party chieftains also lamented that they are being stripped of party patronage as chieftains of the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party are the ones benefitting from federal government appointments under the Tinubu administration.
“Since we formed this great party in 2013, we have been hit with mindless violence and damage over and over again. Since then, we have lost track of the number of bodies and can’t say how many of our member’s property have been lost to political violence.
“Without doubt, we can say that any small gain we made after the blatant assault on democracy and our right to freely choose our leaders and representatives in 2015, and the rerun elections of 2016 were lost due to the chaos that occurred during the 2018 Congresses and the judgement that took our candidates off the ballot for 2019.
“The scale of violence and all sorts of ambushes were scary, but they didn’t stop us. However, our legitimate challenge to the electoral malfeasance visited on us by a combination of factors under an APC-led Federal Government sabotaged our best and honest efforts this year. Not only were our gubernatorial candidates and other candidates not allowed to get materials from INEC to file their petitions at the Tribunals after the elections on February 25 and March 18, 2023, but our party also withdrew as a petitioner soon after we completed the filing process. That has never happened in the history of Nigeria’s major political parties. The party that sponsored our candidates pulled the rug beneath their feet when the party was needed the most.
“Your Excellency, if the event described above shocked us a little, what happened next was card-carrying PDP members of Rivers State got appointments in our APC Federal Government left us completely confused and very upset. Those being rewarded are PDP members who spent huge State resources trying to destroy APC in Rivers State since 2013 and failed, primarily because these loyal APC members here resisted them fiercely.
“Your Excellency would be shocked that as we address you in this meeting, the Rivers State Chapter of the APC has no representation at any level of governance in our country. There isn’t a single Rivers APC member appointed at any level of the Federal, State or Local Government. Things are much worse now than they were in 2015 and we are being foreclosed from exercising our right to challenge the results of elections that do not represent the expressed will of the people of Rivers State.
“We can only urge the President and leader of our great party to do more for God’s glory and the APC’s good. This includes appointing our sons and daughters to key positions and other forms of empowerment of our members to cater for our faithful supporters who despite the human and material losses they have encountered remain longstanding in faith with the APC.”
Responding to their demands, Ganduje assured them that their grievances would be looked into while appealing to them to remain faithful to the APC.
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