A former national publicity secretary of the defunct New Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, has said that comments attributed to APC chieftain Tony Okocha that the party has conceded the ministerial slot for the state to former Governor Nyesom Wike are cheap blackmail.
The trending report, which has caught media attention, also accused former Minister of Transportation and the de facto leader of Rivers APC, Rotimi Amaechi, of working against the emergence of Bola Tinubu at the presidential polls.
“It is crass irresponsibility and abuse of free speech for any sane mind to mention that just one individual influenced the voting direction of over 200,000 people in a democratic society when it is established that the same individual to whom the praise for electoral victory is being ascribed lost woefully in his very polling unit where his influence should have even begun,” Eze said in a statement signed and made available to reporters in Port Harcourt on Wednesday.
He avowed: “Wike suffered a damning defeat in his very primary area of influence-polling unit -yet Tony Okocha and his band of sycophants skewed the facts to suit their own political hustle.
“All these and more are stage-managed tricks carefully crafted to rub the Rivers APC and its leadership particularly, Amaechi, in the mud to discredit his good deeds.”
The APC party chieftain said it is shameful to see that Wike of the PDP and Abe of the SDP are fighting dirty over who gets the ministerial slot from Rivers State in an APC-led federal government.