The Chairman, Caretaker Committee of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Tony Okocha has rendered a public apology to all APC members in the state for what he described as the sordid past of the party in Rivers State.
This is as the party has vowed to protect the 27 former PDP members of the Rivers State House of Assembly who recently defected to the party.
He made the apology on Sunday at a thanksgiving service and stakeholders’ meeting held at the Polo club in Port Harcourt organised by the caretaker committee to thank God for its emergence.
Okocha said “I want to apologise to party members. We have goofed, we have fluffed overtime. Today’s meeting is not to remind you of our sordid past but to welcome you to a promising future. We will not revisit the anger of the past but we will build on robust and solid foundations based on the units because we will conduct elections.”
He stated that the APC would now contest elections, not one that boycotts elections declaring that the new era marked the death of “the moribond PDP in Rivers State.”
He also used the opportunity to welcome the defected state legislators into the party stating that they had the right to meet at whatever place they chose despite the ongoing renovation of the assembly complex by the state government.
“So if the essence of destroying the assembly is to gag them, they have failed. Our assembly will continue to sit and make good laws for Rivers State.
“If they are scared of impeachment, we have said that impeachment is not a coup d’etat. In a democracy impeachment is a norm and it works. They are now our property, they are APC members and we will not allow anybody to threaten them,” he stated.
Factional Speaker of the House of Assembly, Martin Amaewhule and leader of the defected lawmakers, in his statement, reiterated that the 27 defected members of the assembly followed due process in their defection saying that their action was in compliance with Section 109, Sub-section 1 of the 1999 constitution, as amended.
He said it was clear that the PDP is divided and that they studied all the options and decided to join the APC because of its ‘Renewed Hope Agenda’, adding that Rivers State was already enjoying the benefits of the agenda with several political appointments, ongoing reconstruction of the Eleme-Onne axis of the East-West road and the promise of the commencement of production by the Port Harcourt refinery expected to bring down fuel price by 2024.
In his solidarity speech, the national legal adviser of the APC, Prof. Abdulkarim Abubakar Kana who represented the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Ganduje commended the defected assembly members saying that they took the right decision in joining the APC.
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