Amaechi ought to ensure level playing field for all aspirants in Rivers – Abe

Senator Magnus Abe (Rivers Southeast) has stated that the Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi, who is the leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State and the Southsouth zone, ought to ensure a level playing field for all aspirants in the state.

Abe, a governorship aspirant on APC’s platform, also noted that his disagreement with Amaechi, a former Rivers governor, was political.

The former Secretary to the Rivers State Government in Amaechi’s administration (Abe), yesterday in an online statement by his spokesperson, Parry Benson, stressed that the transportation minister earlier publicly declared that he (Amaechi) would not support his (Abe’s) governorship aspiration.

The senator said: “I am amused by some of these allegations and stories doing the rounds. For the records, the disagreement between me and the minister (Amaechi) is political. He is the leader of the party, but he has said publicly, on several occasions, that he can never support me.

“That means the entire country knows that he cannot pretend to be neutral or an unbiased umpire in any matter in which my interest and the interests of those interested in me are concerned. Yet, as the leader, it is his responsibility to provide a level playing field for us all.”

Abe, an ex-Rivers Commissioner for Information, also insisted that the people that converged on the APC’s state secretariat on Forces Avenue, old Government Reservation Area (GRA), Port Harcourt last Friday were not thugs, but members and supporters of the party.

He said: “The people he (Amaechi) referred to as thugs and hoodlums were the same people that were his heroes yesterday. They were the people we used to block the Rivers State Judiciary (in Port Harcourt) when his government was threatened. They were the people that slept for many days outside the Rivers State House of Assembly to protect his government.

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“A lot of them were members of Save Rivers Movement who risked their lives and gave their all to birth the APC in this state. He knows a lot of them by name, but today they are thugs and hoodlums, because he is now the oppressor.

“We are politicians. Tomorrow, when we need voters, who will these people now branded as thugs be? People paid for forms, they had their tellers and no one was telling them what was going on. They besieged the state secretariat for explanations.

“Rather than the leader (Amaechi) to come and address the people, they brought armed policemen to open fire on innocent party men and women. The attack led to the pandemonium at the secretariat.

“The people were there (at Rivers APC secretariat in Port Harcourt last Friday) from morning and there was no violence, until the policemen came and opened fire on APC members who were totally peaceful. Who authorised the shooting and why?”

The transportation minister, while speaking with reporters in Port Harcourt after the protest, directly accused Abe of mobilising thugs to APC’s Rivers secretariat to vandalise, loot and destroy valuable property, because the senator did not want internal democracy through congresses/elections, while opting for undemocratic consensus candidature.

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