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By Godwin Chukwumaechi, Port Harcourt
Sen. Magnus Abe, the senator who represented Rivers South-East Senatorial district in the 9th National Assembly, on Wednesday appealed to his teeming supporters to trust his recent reconciliation with the Minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, and return to the All Progressives Congress, APC.
He made the appeal at a meeting with leaders and grassroots coordinators of his political support groups, and other supporters, where he officially informed them of the decision to return to the APC.
Abe, who defected to the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and flew the party’s governorship flag in the 2023 gubernatorial election in Rivers State recently announced his return to the APC, the party on which platform he had pursued his governorship ambition since 2015.
After several promises that he would not leave the party being one of its foundation members, Abe was forced to leave to the SDP in 2023 due to a prolonged and intractable intra-party squabbles between him and former Governor Rotimi Amaechi, then leader of the APC in Rivers State, that made the party suffer huge electoral loses.
At the heat of the campaign for the 2023 general elections, he also fell out with his political allies, Nyesom Wike, then governor of Rivers State and Tony Okocha, his fellow warrior in the then APC trenches.
But speaking with his supporters on Wednesday, Abe explained his decision to tow the path of reconciliation with Wike saying; “I have my reasons. Number one is that everybody knew that from the beginning we tied ourselves to Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu. The first billboard in support of Tinubu in the south south was put up here.
“I was patron to every pro-Tinubu organisation in the South -South. Yes the FCT minister is my friend. I did everything to facilitate him becoming part of the Tinubu campaign because I knew that his presence will make substantial difference that will help us to win.
“It’s not true that Wike came and pushed me aside. No. We had a disagreement but I will not give the details of the disagreement. Wike did not steal anything from us, he did not deceive us to take anything from us. That was not how it happened, but something happened”.
The senator pleaded; “So I want to use this opportunity to appeal to all of you who have any misgivings about what is happening in the party to let it go. I’m making that appeal because I know what happened. Wike is my friend and if you know the politics of Rivers State, you will know that there is nobody that have not been offended. So there’s nobody that you want to work with now that you are not going to reconcile with.
“Anybody you say you are going to work with, you must reconcile with the person because I have fought with people, I have fought against them, I have fought by them I have fought for them. We are politicians here, we know what has happened in the state over the past how many years.
“So we cannot be in politics alone, we must do it with people and you cannot go and do it with a child that was born this morning. Because those are the only ones we have not offended or who have not offended us. Anybody who is up to 18 years old of age, you have offended the person and the person must have offended you. So if you now want to go and do politics with anyone of them you must reconcile.
“Of all these politicians who are the ones that we will reconcile with and you will be sure that if they say they have let it go and they actually let it go and they will not hide it at the back of their mind and use it to wound you in the future?
“Look at their history and then look at Wike’s history, if you look around him, there is nobody around him that has not offended him at one time or the other, and he is able to let go, some of this people, I have attended meeting with them, 200 times, if they have hated you they will hate you, there is nothing you will do that will take away what they have in their mind against you, but with Wike, we have fought, we reconcile, I drink my drink and leave it and come back and carry it, when we’re together, I know we’re together, when we’re apart, I know that we’re apart, and he agrees that we work together, that means that he has agreed, if he did not want it, he will say no.
“With such a person, no matter how much we have offended one another, I am more comfortable to go back to say we can work together and if he accepts that we can work together, I will agree, and I want you people to trust my judgement on this one.
“If we go anywhere else, and I say we have reconciled, we will still have to be very careful, we will not be that free, but here, I assure you people that if we agree, we have agreed, and we will be able to make progress.
“I want to use this opportunity to appeal to all of you who have any misgivings about what is happening in the party or to us here as Tinubu people to let it go, I am making that appeal, because I know what happened.”
Abe also explained his reasons for returning to the APC.
He said; “We have taken a decision that we will go back to the APC, we will work with the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. We will work with the Caretaker Committee chairman of Rivers APC, Chief Tony Okocha, we will work with all structures of the APC.” he said.
Explaining further on why it was necessary for them to go back to the APC, the two time Senator recalled, “When our faction broke out from the state party, they said that this rebellion will not last up to six months we will go hungry and come back to beg, but six years later, today, we’re still here, that is why we must go back to the party and we must go back now.
“Chief Tony Okocha was part of us in that meeting, he was an integral part of what we did, and today he is the state chairman and I say I want to make peace with him they say, no I should continue to fight, they should go and fight, I am not fighting, I want peace in the party.
“Anybody who knows the story of APC knows that there is no reason for us to continue to fight, it is time to put the party together.
