A chieftain of Rivers State‘s APC, Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, described the resignations within Governor Siminialayi Fubara’s cabinet as a necessary step to inject fresh talent and prepare the administration for future challenges.
Naija News had earlier reported a gale of resignations from some of the nine commissioners who had previously resigned in the heat of the political crisis in the state before President Bola Tinubu intervened last year.
Their resignations came 24 hours after Fubara slammed Wike and estranged his political godfather, accusing him of leaving a huge debt burden for him.
Five commissioners tendered their resignations in separate letters addressed to the Governor through the Secretary to the State Government, Tammy Danagogo.
According to Eze, the moles’ exit was overdue, and it was preferable for them to leave voluntarily rather than gradually be pushed out.
Eze, a former national spokesman for the defunct New Peoples Democratic Party, nPDP, called Senator Magnus Abe’s recent verdict on the 27 stranded Rivers lawmakers proof of his status as a perverse political hireling.
He stated that former Rivers South-East Senator Abe has grossly misrepresented the Constitution’s clear stance on the status of the 27 pro-Wike former lawmakers, whose defection in early 2023 marked their voluntary exit from the Rivers State House of Assembly.
In a recent publication, Abe said that when he served as Senator, he and eleven others defected from the political platform on whose sponsorship they were elected to the Red Chambers to another political organization without any consequence whatsoever.
In a statement released to the media, Eze criticized Abe for sounding uninformed about how the circumstances leading to the defection of the 27 state lawmakers vastly differed from the severe political crisis that prompted their exit from the PDP in 2014, which Abe cited as a comparison.
Eze said, “During the time Abe and others defected, PDP was embroiled in crisis, and as a result, during the National Congress of party at Eagle Square, six Governor’s, including former Vice President and critical stakeholders of PDP like Senator Saraki and others left the Congress to form a parallel Congress, and that action gave birth to the New Peoples Democratic Party where some of us were elected as the national officers.
“That parallel convention produced Abubakar Baraje as National Chairy while His Excellency Olagunsoye Oyinlola as National Secretary with Chief Sam Sam Jaja as National Vice chairman from the party.
‘The split in PDP then was so pronounced that the then PDP National Chairman, Bamanga Turkur was gasping for air.”
According to Eze, the circumstances of the former Rivers lawmakers are unlike the case mentioned by Abe to gain favour with FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, emphasizing that the former SDP gubernatorial candidate is simply pretending to be ignorant.