New Force Emerging In Rivers State

The options appear to be opening up for a third force to emerge in Rivers State to produce a new leadership outside the two main political parties in the run-up to the February, 2023 general elections.
The two parties, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, have worked themselves into intractable crises that are already eating deep into their structures and tearing them down.
Besides settling for unpopular and uncharismatic candidates for the governorship election, the PDP and APC have not been able to overcome and manage the fallouts of their presidential and governorship primaries that tool place over two months ago. If anything, the divisions within the parties are widening as the general elections approach.
In the ruling PDP, the governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, has split with some of his dependable allies and removed them as leaders of the party in their respective local government areas. And they are heavyweights like Hon. Austin Opara, a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, His Excellency, King Celestine Omehia, a former Govenor, Senator Lee Maeba, Senator Betty Apiafi, and Hon. Tele Ikuru, a former Deputy Governor. The governor had in the past parties ways with Hon. Uche Secondus, a former National Chairman of the party.
And the prognosis is not looking like they are going to get over the situation yet with Wike taking up battles with the national leadership of the party in Abuja after he felt betrayed in the presidential primary election where he came second.
Not a few leaders and members of the party are impressed by the confrontations he has taken on with the national leadership of the party and the presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. The intransigence had made the party to bypass the governor and reach out to other party leaders in the state to constitute the state’s branch of the presidential campaign organisation. This in itself cannot work because experience has shown that states where incumbent governors are sidelined, the party loses.
The body language of the governor has not helped matters. Even inner party caucus party leaders do not as yet know where he is headed. He had only said during the commissioning of a project in Port Harcourt that he will in due time tell the people of Rivers State where to vote in the general elections. But that is speculative and time is running fast.
Should the PDP fail to put its house in order chances are that 2023 will meet it a divided house and that could sound fatal for the party.
If the PDP house is divided, that of APC is like a fallen house. In the PDP, the gladiators are not quitting so the chances of reconciliation and bouncing back exist. But the crises in the APC has torn the party into shreds.
The loss of the state party leader, Hon. Chibuike Amaechi in the APC presidential primaries has domoralised and completely demobilised the ranks of the party in the state as they have not been able to recover and step up to work with the national leadership of the party.
The result is that notable leaders of the party have left in droves and have pitched their tents with other parties where they think they can find a future. Among those that have left are Senator Magnus Abe, Prince Tonye Princewill, Hon. Chidi Wihioka, Mrs. Ibim Seminatari, Dr Dawari George and many others that cannot find space in the APC.
The candidate of the party, Architect Tonye Cole, has not shown enough charisma to gather the party together, even as the party’s prospects continue to dwindle as the elections inch close.
The leader of the party, has not yet recovered from his loss of the presidential primary and even though he had visited the state on a few occasions, his presence had not brought any assurance to the rank and file of the party. Amaechi’s no love lost situation with the national leadership of the party and the party’s presidential candidate, Senator Ahmed Tinubu, has further darkened the sky for the party in the state.
The storm is already gathering and the combined dissatisfaction with the two parties and their unresolved internal crises are shifting the political goalposts to favour new options. And the looking in the face of Rivers voters in the new and smaller parties.
Though the candidate of the SDP, Senator Magnus Abe, pulls a lot of weight, his spoiler roles in the politics of the state in the last few years has marked him out as a negative factor. Besides, he belongs to the class of the current rulers in state, who have run out of ideas and no longer have anything to offer, except to say it is his turn having been around for a long time.
The current political mood of the nation, which is driven by youths does not go well with the established parties. And they do not want to flow with those who have been identified with political leadership the last two decades. A change tends to favour new berths like the Labour Party, whose candidate, Comrade Beatrice Itubor, had successfully led the labour movement in Rivers State against executive recklessness.
Itubor is likely to benefit from the wave which has followed the Labour Party at the national level, where Peter and Ahmed Datti are seen to be the face of the new politics in Nigeria. With an aggrieved labour movement behind the Labour Party candidate and the divisions in the main parties, the prospects look good for a change.
With many candidates emerging from the Kalabari area, that had been clamouring for power shift to the area, fears are that Tonye Cole of the APC, Dawari George of the Action Congress, Dumo Lulu-Briggs of Accord Party and Sonoma Jackrich of the National Rescue Movement slugging it out there will split their votes and lose out.