‘Jonathan ’ll Lose Rivers Votes’

President Goodluck Jonathan will lose the election in Rivers State come 2015 if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) fields Mr Ezebunwo Nyesom Wike as its governorship candidate.
This was the assertion of 19 aggrieved governorship aspirants of the PDP who gathered under the auspices of Rivers Mainstream Coalition.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja, yesterday, leader and spokesman of the aspirants, Prof Israel Owata accused the national leadership of the party of silence over series of protests lodged with it on the crisis rocking the party in the state.
He said the aspirants had exhausted all avenues within different organs of the party like its National Working Committee, Board of Trustees and National Executive Committee in their honest quest for solutions to the lingering crisis within the PDP in Rivers State.
Owate also said that he and other aspirants were not happy that the leadership of the party, led by its Acting National Chairman, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu refused to listen to the advice given by leaders of the party from South-South, led by Chief Edwin Clark, that the governorship position be zoned to either the Riverine or the Ogoni in the state.
He called on the party and the President to either listen to the cry of the aspirants or the “PDP risks losing the two million voters from Rivers State.”
He said it would be wrong for the Governor of the State, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi who is an Ikwere to also handover to another person from his tribe when leaving office in 2015.
Owate said that there were specific cases of impunity being perpetrated on the state to achieve the total exslusion of the PDP leaders and their followers who he said, insisted on zoning and respecting the established rotations formular in the state.
He said, “The naked hijack of the ward delegates election which had a four-man electoral committee that was nominated by the stinking cartel and the very shoddy screening of State House and National Assembly aspirants which left more persons screened out than made the list with no official explanation till date.”
He listed other actions he considered as acts of impunity being perpetrated by the party in the state to include what he described as the dramatic and shocking screening out of several qualified governorship aspirants and the “charade called the House of Assembky primaries which were all thuggery-enforced kangaroo primaries conducted without official delegates’ list and which returned most of the ‘favoured aspirants’ unopposed.
“All these acts of desperation are part of the grand conspiracy to give Wike the exclusive right to the party’s governorship ticket for the 2015 elections in total disregard of the party’s constitution on zoning and rotation of political offices.”
He said that if the situation was not attended to, the people of the state including the aggrieved members of the party at various levels, were capable of deciding their own fate.
But, he warned that such decision would not only affect the outcome of the governorship election, he added that it was also capable of having a negative effect on the presidential election.

According to him, “We are worried that our party, the PDP is about to sacrifice the interest of over five million Rivers people and put at grave risk the attainment of the usual two million votes in the presidential election because of the inordinate governorship ambition of one man.
“We shall as patriotic Rivers people do what is right for our state and we urge the PDP to do same.
“A couple of persons are bent on twisting and distorting our political tradition, we want to sound it loud and clear that Rivers people have very wide options and the nature and scope of their response cannot be determined by the Rivers Mainstream coalition of by the PDP.”
He said the aspirants would want the president to call on the NWC of the PDP to cancel what he described as the flawed Rivers State Ward Delegates Election.
Apart from this, he said the party must open,y declare that the zone which produced Amaechi must be excluded from fielding candidates as had been done in Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Adamawa and Enugu States.
He also called for the sacking of the Deputy National Chairman of the party who is from the state, Mr. Uche Secondus, who he said had shown enough bias towards the governorship aspiration of Wike.

Rivers State Governor, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi (right) with State Commissioner for Special Duties, Barr Dickson Umunakwe, inspecting the burnt stalls at the New Layout Market, in Port Harcourt, yesterday.