Amaechi not funding APC, says Rivers party chairman

The All Progressives Congress says Rotimi Amaechi, governor of Rivers state, is not funding the party, contrary to claims that he had been footing the party’s bills in return for the chance to be named running mate to Muhammadu Buhari, which eventually went to Yemi Osinbajo.

Reacting to claims of Amaechi’s heavy financial involvement with the party, Davies Ikanya, chairman of APC Rivers state chapter, argued that the APC was too big to be funded from the coffers of the Rivers state government.

But he admitted that Amaechi, who is the director-general of the APC presidential campaign organisation, had been playing a key role in the party.

“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,” Ikanya 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 Amaechi has been playing in re-positioning APC to salvage Nigeria from the savage grip of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).”

He argued that the wealth that Rivers state’s supposed wealth had been taken away by the hostile PDP-controlled federal government through a combination of declining federal allocation and the ceding of some of its oil wells to neighbouring Abia and Bayelsa states.

“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,” he added.