Rivers APC chieftains say discord with Amaechi not anti-party

TRACKING_____Some All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftains in Rivers State have stated that disagreeing with the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, who leads the party in the state, does not amount to disagreeing with the party.

The APC stakeholders from Port Harcourt City Council chapter said the party could not disown or dissociate with two former House of Representatives members, Igo Aguma and Lasbury Amadi, among others because they expressed misgivings about the way the minister was running the party in the state.

In a statement issued after a stakeholders’ meeting in Port Harcourt at the weekend, the APC leaders argued that the minister was not the party and vice versa. Aside Aguma and Amadi, the other stakeholders that signed the statement include Brave Wobo, Dennis Ejekwu, Mrs. Mary Allagoa, Sani Okiri, Chibuenyi Nwanodi, Chimbiko Akarolo, Victor Ogbonda, Ferdinand Anyawata and Worgu Boms.

They observed that recently a group of party members loyal to the minister, for reasons that were still unravelling, held a meeting and issued a statement to the press in which they claimed that the council chapter of the APC had disowned Aguma and Amadi over their criticism of the minister.

It was unfortunate, they added, that the other faction of the party made many infantile comments against Aguma, accusing him of attacking Amaechi, after he had been favoured with more contracts, political appointments and financial support than all other members of the chapter.

According to the stakeholders, it was wrong for Aguma to be castigated on account of expressing himself on the failure-prone leadership style of the minister with respect to the administration and running of Rivers APC, which is now comatose as a result of series of electoral losses under the minister.

They stressed that politics of bitterness and hero worship, in which anyone with real or perceived variant political view from that of the minister must be demonised and publicly humiliated, was unbecoming of the faction loyal to the minister.

“This brand of politics of sycophancy is unproductive and capable only of setting up brothers and sisters, friends, kinsmen or compatriots generally against one another just to please the one-sided leadership whose brand of bitterness as an ingredient of politics is very well known, well documented and even gazetted in its entirety.”

Insisting that Aguma did not engage in any anti-party activity, whether at the council, state or national level for criticising the minister, they argued that no power existed in the party’s constitution to warrant the disowning of a member or of publicly maligning a member for expressing his views on the way the party is run, even if to the chagrin of the leader of the party.

They further called on all stakeholders of the party to eschew bitterness, vendetta, anti-democratic dispositions and unbridled megalomania, but yield to constitutionalism, inclusiveness, fair play, merit and respect for members.