PDP believed in bigwigs who couldn’t win elections– Rivers ex-chair

Ambassador Desmond Akawor is the immediate past chairman of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in Rivers State. The former Nigerian Ambassador to South Korea speaks with OLAJIDE OMOJOLOMOJU and DENNIS NAKU, about the political crisis in the state and the intervention of the elders, among other salient issues

There seems to be an uneasy calm in Rivers State now following the events of October 30. What steps has the PDP, which is the ruling party in Rivers State, taken to resolve these crises?

Well, when you say crisis, it is difficult for me to see a crisis, because I don’t see any crisis. As a party, we are there to interact with our people. As a party, issues come up daily and we address them daily.

And as a party, whatever comes up that is beyond the party, we have different levels of authority within the party hierarchy, which will end up at the table of the Board of Trustees, BoT, of the party.

A lot of people are envious of the situation and if we cough, the other group of people will have malaria! And a party is like a family relationship. I can tell you whatever that must have happened, whatever you may have perceived, the party is on top of it, our leaders are there, and they have the capacity.

The other day, the two factions of the House sat differently. Are these not issues that need to be addressed?

You are talking about the House of Assembly. You are not talking about the state. The House of Assembly has its crises and it is such that, you know where you have young men and women in charge of position, of course, some may do one thing or the other to outsmart the other one. But the most important thing is what effect does it have on the state? As far as the state is concerned, you may have one who says he is of this faction. The other one who says he is of the other faction. At the end of the day, what is the position of the party? The position of the party is the position of the state.

One of them has already run to the court and the court has made a pronouncement that the status quo should be maintained. So there is nobody who will disobey the court order. So as far as the Assembly issue is concerned, at the end of the day, it will be sorted out. It is a leadership crisis as far as the Assembly is concerned. The members are all our sons and daughters and they are all party members. But remember, when this started, I’m sure they must have been privy to the press statement of the party.

What is the status of the impeachment notice the House issued to the governor?

It is not standing, because as far as we are concerned, people can do things in annoyance. After that, the elders of the party moved to Abuja and discussed with the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. The elders came back and met the governor and we agreed as elders that, the issue had been settled. And we took the governor to the minister’s residence and we had a lengthy discussion that took us from 9 am to almost 1 am.

Why was Governor Fubara’s 100 days in office not celebrated?

You know everybody has his style. I am sure. Fubara has his style. 100 days in office, we are even saying commissioning. The issue is, is governance on course? Yes. Is the man doing his job? Yes. We saw what happened in Lagos between Raji Fashola and Bola Tinubu.

Tinubu was in charge of politics and Fashola was in charge of governance. And we were all clapping for Lagos. Why don’t you think we should copy that? Politics is a different thing. The issue is that governance is taking place. Today we have gone to commission project. With that project, value has been added to it because it has been commissioned. We have other things, maybe this week there will be another commissioning, next week there will be another commissioning, you know since commissioning is the only way to show performance.