24th April, 2013
The war of attrition between President Goodluck Jonathan and the Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, is heating up the political atmosphere in Rivers State. It is getting fiercer by the day as both gladiators employ every available tactics to outwit each other. Though the 2015 general election is two years away, the body language of these two stalwarts of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, suggests why they want to have control of the party’s machinery in the state at all costs.
One of the schemes hatched by the hench men in Abuja in cahoots with national leaders of the party was the sacking, at the behest of a high court in Abuja, of the party’s state executive led by Chief Godspower Ake, believed to be loyal to Governor Amaechi and replacing it with the newly handpicked Felix Obuah-led executive believed to be loyal to Nyesome Wike, Jonathan’s ‘boy’ and the Minister of State for Education.
Amaechi’s loyalists in the Rivers State House of Assembly responded days later by sacking the chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Council, Prince Timothy Nsirim, his deputy and all the 17 councillors in the council. Those sacked are said to be Wike’s loyalists.
As it is, no one knows the extent to which this war would be fought and the number of casualties it would claim. But our worry is that it is heating up the polity, especially in Rivers State, where the war is being fought on all fronts.
It is believed that President Jonathan wants to cut Amaechi to size and so may have a hand in this battle because it started with the surreptitious splitting of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum which Amaechi heads by forming the PDP Governors’ Forum now headed by Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom state. Since then the relationship between the two leaders has been frosty.
If anything, President Jonathan cannot afford to create the kind of political tension his proxy war has precipictated in Rivers State at a time the country is on tenterhooks. With the security challenge almost overwhelming the country, the President and his loyalists should consider the wider implications of this political muscle-flexing that could end up badly bruising the gladiators.
The development in Rivers State has led to peaceful protest in solidarity with the governor. Also, the manner in which the scenario is unfolding clearly shows that there is a witch-hunt against Amaechi by his detractors in PDP. Jonathan should call his men to order now and stop heating the atmosphere unnecessarily.