Our attention has been drawn to a seeming apology letter by Hon. Chidi Julius Lloyd in which the former state lawmaker, in the guise of heeding the advice of Senator Magnus Abe to apologize for the invective he rained on President Buhari during a live television program, attempted to as usual blackmail and concoct all manner of lies against the Senator representing Rivers south east Senatorial District.
While Chidi Lloyd’s insidious motive to turn truth on its head is evident right from his faulty start, we are compelled to correct his tirade that was designed to misinform unsuspecting unsuspecting members of the public.
Firstly, Hon. Chidi Lloyd’s frail attempt to exculpate his principal, the Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi from the diatribe and tantrum he threw on the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on live television is a disingenuous and unfortunate afterthought.
Every Nigerian who has followed Rivers politics in the last two years knows that Chidi Lloyd has no view of his own except that sanctioned and vetted by his principal Rt. Hon Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi. It is even needless to state that his television appearance was sponsored and paid for by the Minister of Transportation and that he was there for only one purpose which was to canvass the view of the AAC of which Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi is state Leader in Rivers. Trying therefore to separate the Minister from his views is akin to separating conjoined twins without surgery.
Those who do not learn from their mistakes are bound to repeat them. Of great concern to us is that like his principal, Hon. Chidi Lloyd has continued to blame everyone and everything but himself and his own tendencies in the party for the protracted crisis in Rivers APC. It is this same attitude of always smothering the reading public with orgies of buck-passing that led Hon. Lloyd to echo the thinking of his principal by blaming and lambasting President Buhari for the predicament of Rivers APC. And we ask, is President Buhari now also working for Wike?
The truth is that Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi took all the wrong and anti-democratic decisions that have brought Rivers APC to its kneel. He is the person who warned and threatened other leaders of the party, who had sacrificed everything for the growth of the party, not to dare contest for offices for which they are qualified or he would fight them. He is the one who publicly said that he would destroy Rivers APC if Senator Abe did not shelve his gubernatorial ambition.
Indeed Rt. Hon. Amaechi is the person who indiscriminately removed caucus leaders of the party in almost all the LGAs for their insistence on internal democracy. He is the person who would call stakeholders meeting of the party and start by declaring, “if you are a supporter of Abe, leave this meeting”. He is the person who said that those who don’t agree that he has the exclusive right to impose candidates of his own choice on the people should leave the party and join Wike. He is the person who unlawfully excluded over 16,000 party faithful from the congress of 5th of May 2018 by denying them nomination forms that they paid for. He is the person who took congress of the party to a hotel called INTELS camp to perpetrate those acts of unlawful exclusion that led to the litigations. And he is the person who ordered the party to disobey all orders made by the courts to try to find a solution to the crisis in the party.
Rt. Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi is the person who ordered the savage attacks on the judiciary complex in Rivers State and who, knowing that the courts have already nullified the congresses conducted by his faction of Rivers APC, cajoled the National Leadership of the party into adopting indirect primaries for Rivers State using voided delegates to purportedly vote for candidates. What role did President Buhari, Senator Abe and all those the Minister points accusing finger at play in all these? Why can’t Hon. Chidi Lloyd encourage his principal to accept responsibility, apologize to thousands of party members in the state and sue for peace?
There is no Nigerian who does not know where Senator Abe stood in the face off between the legislature and the executive. Abe was always on live TV expressing his views which is known to all Nigerians. In one particular episode, he appeared with Majority Leader of the Senate, Senator Ahmed Lawan to canvass his views. If Chidi Lloyd can say that only 10 APC Senators out of 109 Senators in Nigeria supported President Buhari, so be it! People like Dr Chidi Lloyd should know that their continued blackmail of Senator Abe is no longer of any value to Nigerians.
Before the postponement of the Presidential election, Senator Abe convened a well attended meeting of Rivers APC stakeholders of more than 20 persons per LGA at Freedom House and charged them to mobilize Rivers people to vote for President Buhari, disbursing his personal resources to them while Lloyd’s principal, Rotimi Amaechi, selectively dispensed logistics for the election in his care to only his ‘yes men’. Senator Abe repeated the same gesture on the eve of the rescheduled election, out of love for the APC and the President. Lloyd’s claim that Abe held meeting with 23 persons to give them a contrary charge is only a figment of his imagination.
It is a clear fact that the Minister’s group, in pursuit of their politics of vendetta, actively worked against the President in certain LGAs where Sen. Abe’s supporters held sway. For instance, it was the inchoate deputy governor of Amaechi’s group who ordered thugs to disrupt voting in Ward 16, Bera, Gokana LGA, where the President was coasting home to a massive victory in an attempt to write zero vote for the President in Abe’s ward and 270 votes for Atiku and thereafter use it as tool of blackmail against the Senator. If voting was not disrupted by the Amaechi group, the President would have won squarely in Gokana. In whose interest was the Amaechi group working then?
Dr. Chidi Lloyd and his principal must understand that Nigerians are now apathetic to their constant rendition of falsehood against Senator Abe and playing the blame game against everyone else including their latest victim, president Buhari, for their self-inflicted agony.
We are nevertheless not unmindful of the fact that Hon. Chidi Lloyd, in his press release, averred that his disparaging remarks against the president for which he apologized were made out of anger. Likewise, we believe that his tirades against Senator Abe were products of vexation for which he will apologize when he cools off.
King Wenenda Onukwuru
For Kairos Foundation For Enlightenment and Peace.
