You Can’t Join APC Through Backdoor, Rivers Party Chair Tells ‘Atiku Loyalists’  

The Rivers State Caretaker Committee chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC),Tony Okocha, has told loyalists of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who have declared support for President Bola Tinubu that they can not join the party through the backdoor.

Members of the defunct PDP Presidential Campaign Council in the 2023 polls led by the former director general, Dr Abiye Sekibo, on Thursday declared their support for President Tinubu-led administration.

But, Okocha at a press conference in Abuja on Friday, said if the “mid-night pseudo lovers of the President” are now convinced that he is abundantly fit and proper to preside over Nigeria, they should follow the proper channels allowed for porting or decamping to a new party.

He said their, “approach of brow-beating and blackmailing they intend to use, is not fashionable at all,” insisting that “no sane host tolerates a guest who attempts to enter his/her house, through the window when the door is open.”

The interim APC chairman reminded Sekibo and others that a tripe document as the one signed by two persons without office and/or any authority whatsoever, except as they couched it, “former leaders of Atiku Abubakar 2023 Campaign Directors in Rivers State” cannot qualify as position of people of the state.

“This wicked subterfuge cannot work under our watch…This assembly of protesters did not only vehemently carry out rigorous and excruciating campaigns against Asiwaju but they thrumped up and funded hate

speeches against Asiwaju. They and ilk, championed the obscene and absurd denigration of Asiwaju in the media.

“They promoted the devilish narratives that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was frail and unhealthy. Mentally senile. Defecates on self and so, wears diapers. Extremely old and incapable of presiding over Nigeria. Infact, they played God by promoting that Asiwaju was on the departure lounge and will pass on in a bit,” Okocha said.

He noted that those protesters raised the issue of the political crisis in Rivers State and made attempts to link the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, to the fray, describing it as “a puny logic they espoused!”

According to him, the tensed political situation in Rivers State is intraparty as Wike is still a member of the PDP despite entreaties to join APC with his winning magic wand.

“I am aware that despite our entreaties to the Honourable Minister of the FCT, to join us in APC with his winning magic wand, he still believes in PDP. If the

Minister is PDP and the Governor, PDP, is it not apt to say that the bedeviling problems in Rivers State are intra-party?

“If the protesters feel concerned, shouldn’t it be honourable for them to look inwards to seek solutions to the problems than constituting themselves as snitches and fifth columnists and crisis merchants and so to justify their lucre, cast aspersions on the Abuja transformer and reformer, Honorable Minister E. N. Wike?

“Why do they want to further insult Mr. President and APC by telling him that he as leader of APC, appointed a kleptocrat into his cabinet as Minister? When have they repented and withdrawn their suits in court, challenging the Powers of Mr. President to mediate in the political crisis in Rivers State?” he queried.