The chairman of Rivers State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Tony Okocha, has said that the party was not a dumping ground that will just accept the suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara into its fold.
Okocha, who said this why addressing journalists at the APC national secretariat in Abuja on Tuesday, also said Fubara’s political sins would not be forgiven easily on the grounds of his joining the ruling party.
The APC chairman said though the suspended governor had met with President Bola Tinubu after his suspension, adding that it was an indication that he will join the ruling party, stressing that Fubara can not enter APC through the backdoor.
He also said Fubara has not taken any concrete moves towards reconciliation since the declaration of the state of emergency in Rivers State and his subsequent suspension as well as that of members of the State House of Assembly.
“If Fubara decides to join the APC, it has nothing to do with state of emergency in Rivers state. His sins can not be forgiven because he came to our party. It is not true. He has not spoken to me. He will enter the party through the door, not the window.
“Not only him, there are procedures for defection to another party and if he claims to be a politician, he will know that all politics is local, he will try and defect in his ward. From there, it will come to us and my ward chairmen I have asked them, nobody brought any information about him entering APC.
“How can I be worried that somebody visited my president. Don’t forget it is also the season for Sallah. Yesterday, I read somewhere, former Governor Osoba paid Sallah homage and I don’t know whether you saw the President in the company of Chief Nyesom Wike… So we can’t be worried, we can’t gag the President to say you will see Mr A, you will not see Mr B. Perhaps, if I had made an application to see Mr President, I would have been there with my team.
“You will jump into APC today and your sins are forgiven, that can’t be true. It won’t work that way. Then, it would have made APC a dumping ground for people who commit misdemeanour and believe that by and large, we will come for reconciliation. No.
“I’m not a prophet of doom, I can only say to you with the benefit of knowledge that I am not aware of any reconciliatory move. No reconciliation is going on, is it going to talk to Mr President? But Mr President has said go and make peace. No attempt at that. I am not aware of any reconciliatory moves by Fubara and his team,” Okocha said.
The Rivers APC chairman also vilified former Governor Rotimi Amaechi over his recent comments that there was hunger in the land, saying his hunger might have been for power as he had served as speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly, Governor and ‘super minister’ from 1999 to 2023, respectively.
Okocha further said it was also unfortunate for Amaechi to refer to somebody like the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Wike as a ‘child’ when the person had served as local government area chairman in 1999, served as a governor and now minister, stressing that the immediate-past chief executive of Rivers was instrumental to his predecessor’s emergence as the state’s helmsman.
“Amaechi is hungry not for food but for power. He had been speaker for eight years, governor for eight years, super minister for seven and half years, let’s take the other period he was a presidential assistant. If such a person said he was hungry, it was not in good faith but to cast aspersions on Mr President,” he added.
