Rivers APC Insists Amaechi Not Funding Party, Salutes Governor’s Ingenuity

The All Progressives Congress, APC, in Rivers State has rejected claims that the state governor, Chibuike Amaechi, is financing the party at the national level.

The Chairman of the APC in Rivers State, Dr. Davies Ikanya, who stated this in a statement on Monday in Port Harcourt, argued that the state did not have the kind of money Mr. Amaechi is alleged to have spent on financing the party.

Mr. Amaechi has been accused by the Peoples Democratic Party in the state of spending billions of naira on the APC in the hope that he would be named the running mate to its presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari.

Not done with the allegations after Mr. Buhari settled for a former Lagos Attorney General, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) as his running mate, critics said his appointment as the Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, was merely a compensation for the huge money he allegedly spent.

The governor has denied the claim.

The Rivers APC said as has been explained by the governor recently, the APC was too big to be funded from the purse of the Rivers State Government.

“Rivers is not the richest State in either the country or the APC. It is not, for example, anywhere as rich as Lagos, which is an APC State and very much committed to the progress of the party. The truth is that no single State or individual is funding APC; the party is funded by all its committed members”, the party said.

“This is a rumour without foundation and a figment of the imagination of those who invented it. It is based on mere suspicion because of the key role that Governor Amaechi has been playing in repositioning APC to salvage Nigeria from the savage grip of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP”.

The party said much of the money, which people believe that the state government has, “had been taken away by the hostile PDP-controlled Federal Government through a combination of declining Federal allocation and the ceding of some of our oil wells to the neighbouring Abia and President Goodluck Jonathan’s home State, Bayelsa”.

It stated that the reason Rivers State had witnessed unprecedented development in the past seven years was not because of having too much money but because of the ingenuity of the Amaechi-led administration.

“We therefore plead with the idle minds spreading this unholy rumour of his funding APC with Rivers State money to find something better to do with their time”, it stated.

The party also congratulated the governor for putting smiles on the faces of civil servants in the state by paying their December salary before Christmas, “thereby shaming detractors who thought that he would not be able to pay due to the economic emasculation of the State by the PDP-led federal Government”.