BARELY 24 hours after the fracas that took place in Abuja among stakeholders of the Rivers State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, two factions of the party are currently engaged in a war of words.
The brawl among members of the state PDP at the National Campaign Office of the party on Thursday had increased the palpable tension in the party, even as some members warned they would pull the party down should the party at the state level foist the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, on them as a governorship candidate.
It was reported that Wike’s loyalists had beaten up some elders of the party during the row in the Abuja, a development that angered some of the stakeholders of the state PDP.
Cracks in the state PDP became obvious when the Chairman of the party, Mr. Felix Obuah, declared that the governorship position in Rivers would not be zoned to any senatorial district, local government or ethnic nationality.
Some members of the opposition party, who believed that Obuah’s declaration was aimed at paving the way for the emergence of Wike, petitioned the national leadership of the PDP over the development.
Oprite Amachree,the Secretary-General of the Rivers PDP Third Force Movement said, the state PDP, in particular, would be brought down if Wike was presented as the flag bearer of the party for the 2015 election.
“Why would Wike’s thugs push elders to the ground at a meeting where a panel was to hear the grievances of members of the party? Why would they allow only Wike’s loyalists entrance into the Legacy House and block elders and those suspected not to be in support of Wike’s governorship ambition from entering,” Amachree queried.
He attributed the deepening crisis in the state PDP to President Goodluck Jonathan’s alleged lack of commitment to ensuring that peace reigned in the party at the state level.
Claiming that President Jonathan was always looking the other way whenever the minister allegedly overstepped his bounds, Amachree warned that there was no alternative to the rotation of the governorship position in Rivers State.
But the State Chairman of the PDP, Mr. Felix Obuah, dismissed Amachree’s claim, saying the Integration Committee sitting in Abuja was not marred by fracas.
Obuah, who spoke through his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Jerry Needam, described the allegation of attacks at the meeting in Abuja as false, baseless and malicious.
Explaining that that some of the reports were targeted at smearing Wike’s image, Obuah said the allegation was the handiwork of agents of Governor Rotimi Amaechi, whose aim he said was to cause disaffection among the members of the PDP.
“The truth is that the expelled and non-members, seeing that their claims before the Prof. Iya Abubaker-led PDP integration panel were hollow, resorted to cheap blackmail against their target, Wike, which was not necessary,” he added.
Obuah, noted that Wike would not “descend so low” as to engage anybody in a physical combat, whether privately or publicly.