Caretaker chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Tony Okocha, has attributed the crisis in the party in the state to a plot targeted at frustrating the re-election of President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
A Rivers state High Court had on Monday sacked the caretaker committee and reinstated Emeka Beke as chairman but the APC National Working Committee on Thursday insisted that the Okocha-led caretaker panel remained the only recognized leadership of the party in the state.
Addressing journalists in Abuja at the weekend, Okocha said Beke and one Iheanyichukwu Dike had long been suspended from the Rivers State Working Committee of APC on allegations of engaging in anti-party activities.
He maintained that all rigamarole was intended to reinstate Rotimi Amaechi’s ‘minion’ so that the former regained the APC leader and then use the party to fight President Tinubu in 2027, vowing that his group will never allow that plan to sail through.
Okocha said: “Beke was imposed on the APC in Rivers state. I was a member, an ally of Senator Magnus Abe when he was fighting right inside the APC. The reason why we fought was ineptitude, political high-handedness and imposition. Beke was a product of these three issues but was imposed by the then APC leader, Rotimi Amaechi.
“The truth of the matter is that the party has a lot intellectuals, professionals and lecturers. We imagine how a person of lowly academic qualifications can preside over a meeting that some of us would attend but the APC leader then said they wanted somebody who had street boy mentality. But the truth was that he wanted a surrogate, a stooge who would do his bidding. We fought but the APC leader was then a minister and his vestiges were here as leaders of the party.
