AMAECHI DELIBERATELY SET ME UP FOR HUMILIATION
—Pastor Tonye Cole
Pastor Tonye Patrick Cole, sacked governorship candidate of Rivers APC has cried out that the situation he encountered on ground in Rivers APC is radically different from the picture painted to him by the Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, when the former Governor came to Lagos to convince him to pick the ticket of the party for the 2019 gubernatorial election.
Mr Cole, who spoke to our correspondent today shortly after the Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt shut the door against his governorship ambition
bitterly lamented that had the former governor told him all the truth about the internecine crisis in the party, he would not have risked his hard-earned international reputation for the murky water of Rivers politics.
“Politics was was never my thing. The Minister had over ten different meetings with me when he was trying to convince me into this thing, but I believe that he kept certain information concerning the internal contradictions within the party from me. If I understood the magnitude of the internal crisis, I wouldn’t have taken this cliff”.
Pastor Tonye Cole stated that the Minister told him that he was absolutely in control of the party and that Senator Magnus Abe had no power whatsoever to effect any political direction within the APC. He also said that the Minister told him that he had been able to arrest whatever legal obstacle that was on the way.
“He told me not to worry about the court issues that he had arrested the obstacles through his relationship with some high level personalities within the judiciary. He told me that everything would be smooth. That was why I plunged into this thing because I trusted him”.
The sacked Governorship candidate of APC said since he started running around in the state, he has regrettably discovered that many of things the Minister of Transportation told him were not true.
“I came into the state to discover that Senator Abe maintains a very powerful stranglehold on the grassroots, with some of the biggest stakeholders in the party supporting him. During my ward tour, I would shout APC and people would chorus “Magnus Abe for Governor” and I would think what is happening here? And these are the people at the grassroots!”.
“The truth is that I am beginning to feel that Amaechi deliberately set me up for ridicule and this is very painful. You can’t make me pluck myself from my business based on false hope and misrepresentation of fact only to see something totally different on ground”.
Cole said he is still studying the situation on ground to enable him make a final decision on what to do.
“I am still studying the situation. If this thing is not working, I am not someone who deceive people. I will have to take a decision and when I do so, everybody will know”.
When Daily Trust Online contacted the Minister of Transportation for his reaction, he angrily banged the phone on our correspondent, saying he was tired of the Rivers APC crisis.
