Coordinator of the Progressives Aspirants Forum (PAF), comprising 10 governorship aspirants of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the riverine axis of Rivers State, Hon George Tolofari, has declared that 19 party elders were selected to choose a riverine consensus candidate when the aspirants couldn’t arrive at any.
A committee of 19 APC elders had met in Abuja on April 22, 2022, where Tonye Cole was endorsed as the party’s riverine consensus candidate for the 2023 governorship election in the state.
Tolofari, in a statement he issued in Port Harcourt yesterday, said the leader of the party in the state and minister of transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, was not part of the selection process.
He insisted that Cole was not the APC consensus governorship candidate, pointing out that the leadership of the party in the state, had made it clear that other aspirants were free to contest during the party’s governorship primaries.
The PAF coordinator said, “The event that took place on Friday, 22nd April, 2022, where one of the riverine aspirants from the Ijaw extraction was chosen by a committee to represent the riverine aspirants at the forthcoming primaries has brought about mixed feelings and reactions from across many quarters because some expectations were not met.
“Many of you were disgruntled, sad, shocked and even surprised to say the least. Some of you as a result have reached out to me and other party leaders privately and openly to vent your spleen. Sincerely we feel your frustration and understand how it feels when the lot does not fall on you because we’ve all been there before at one time or the other.
“What many of us may not know is that all the aspirants from the Riverine Ijaw extraction came together and surrendered their rights to the party to choose for them since they could not reach a consensus amongst themselves. Hence, the decision taken by the committee was in the best interest of the aspirants, the party and all of us after a thorough scrutiny of all concerned.
“Some of you have erroneously accused and casted aspersions and insults at our leader for imposing Tonye Cole on the party, but unknown to you, our leader, the Hon. Minister of Transportation recused himself from the process and asked us to freely exercise our rights in the best interest of the party which we did.
“I appeal to us all to stop the unwarranted attacks on our leader because he has done nothing wrong, rather he set the stage for free deliberations and consultations. If he had wanted to impose a candidate on us, he would not need to set up a committee.
“He would have just announced his preferred candidate and asked us to support him, but this he didn’t do. It may even surprise some of you that our leader’s preference may not have emerged but he allowed majority decision of the party elders to fly.”