Rotimi Amaechi? Oshiomhole says APC crisis being instigated by Buhari’s minister, Rivers APC

The suspended National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, Wednesday blamed some members of the Rivers State chapter of the party for fuelling the crisis rocking the ruling party.

Oshiomhole, who appeared on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, alleged that the crisis was being instigated by some APC elements in the state, trying to drag the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) into their local fight.

A chieftain of the APC, Daniel Bwala, also appeared on the programme.

Bwala pointedly accused an unnamed minister of being behind the crisis and asked President Muhammadu Buhari to fire him for destabilizing the party.

The unnamed minister, which is reportedly Rotimi Amaechi, Minister of Transportation, and a stalwart of the APC in Rivers State, Magnus Abe, had been at loggerheads over control over the party’s lever in the state.

The crisis, which escalated shortly before the 2019 general elections, forced Amaechi to adopt the African Action Congress (AAC) candidate during the governorship election after the APC was barred from partaking in the elections in the state.

Before the election, Abe had in a chat with journalists, warned that the minister’s alleged dictatorship would hurt the APC badly in the election.

The Deputy National Secretary of the APC, Victor Giadom, who is laying claims to the party’s acting national chairmanship position following Tuesday’s suspension of Oshiomhole as APC helmsman, is a close ally of Amaechi, a development that has forced many to see the minister as the unseen hand behind the crisis that has rocked the party to its foundation.

President Buhari had last month appointed Abe into the reconstituted Board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), a development that reportedly has not gone down well with the minister, who is also a former governor of Rivers State.

Amaechi, according to party insiders, believes the NWC is “pampering” Abe by refusing to sanction him for the crisis in Rivers State.

The Court of Appeal had on Tuesday upheld the lower court’s suspension of Oshiomhole as APC national chairman, a few hours after Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, announced his intention to leave the party following his disqualification from next week’s governorship primaries in the state.