A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Prince Tonye Princewill, has said there was the need to fix the challenges facing the party in the state before discussing who will get the party’s governorship ticket for 2023.
Princewill, who disclosed this while speaking with newsmen in Kano on Saturday evening, said as it stands now, the APC was not in a position to win any election.
He said: “So, if this event will rub off on APC’s fortune in Rivers State; I think if anybody looks carefully, they will see that APC has the capacity to organise. But, having the capacity to organise is not the same thing as organising.
“We have a faction of APC within Rivers State, which Magnus Abe is running and every attempt at stopping Emeka Beke from being Chairman didn’t work and Emeka Beke was sworn-in as Chairman.
“So we have slightly different scenario from what we had before, which you can call a legal party structure in APC. It is a foundation. If APC is serious, PDP is not an issue but we have to be serious.
“Everybody is saying governorship ambition and I ask, what is having a governorship ticket when you cannot win an election on the platform of the party. We need a party that is viable, a party that is serious, a party that is dedicated.
“Then you can talk about governorship ambitions. There is no point owning a ticket that cannot win an election. APC as it stands is not in a position to win an election but we believe that in the next few months, we will see the level of seriousness to face the forthcoming elections.”
Princewill insisted that the problems facing APC in the state was self-inflicted and not Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, as a lot of people were made to believe.
The APC chieftain said: “Everybody complains about Wike; yes, Wike made major blunders, you cannot take that away from him. But he has done some good things and he had taken advantage of APC’s internal issues.
“I have told some people that APC is the biggest problem of APC and not Wike. When people talk about Wike, I don’t bother myself because Wike is not our issue. Our issue is ourselves.
“A properly organised well-run party will run him out of town. We did so in 2019 and it was all open and short before INEC decided to suspend the election and declared what they declared. So, Wike is not an issue, the issue is ourselves.”
Now Chief Emeka Beke is the Authentic chairman in all premise,The party has gotten it right, the structure is now visible and that’s the biggest problem of the PDP.
It’s time to organize and take over. We have a party that can win an election now.
