National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje has charged the seven-man Caretaker Committee set up to administer the Rivers State chapter to create an enabling environment for the party to win election in the south-south state.
Ganduje gave the admonition on Friday while inaugurating the team which has Tony Okocha as its Chairman.
The Caretaker team has a six-month tenure to reconcile aggrieved factions and position the party in Rivers State.
The former Kano state governor cautioned the Okocha-led committee not to create tendencies but to treat all party faithful as members of one political family.
He said:” We have confidence in you, and we expect you to involve yourselves because part of the reform system, we have introduced electronic registration of our members we request you to pay attention to the electronic registration of our members and I want you to spearhead that exercise.
“We expect you to constitute various committees so that you can get more and more entrants into the party, that is the work that you should do.
“Also, we expect you to create an enabling environment so that congresses could be conducted for the emergence of leadership at the ward level, local government level, state level and even senatorial level.
“We expect you to put more life into this party, there is no discrimination, do not bother yourself about factions because you are brothers for unity, and regard yourself as APC brothers.
“We would like you to make history by building a strong foundation for our party, so that during the next gubernatorial election we have an APC government in River State, during the next presidential election, even though we are grateful, River State is the only state in the south where we succeeded in electing our president Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“So the government of today, you are part of it, you contributed and elected him to the government, today you can beat your chest affirming that you have done your best and it is your contribution that our president has won the election we are proud of you.
“But on the state issue, later we shall discuss how we must work very hard for that.
“You are given a tenure of six months starting from today, for you to administer this party, get more entrants, those who are coming into the party, and provide ground for congresses, so that new leadership may emerge in our great party.”
In his acceptance speech, Okocha recalled how internal dissension had caused the party victory in previous general elections.
He assured the APC National Chairman that his Committee would deliver diligently on the assignment it has been saddled with.
“We want to assure you that you have assembled eggheads, good party builders, and ardent party supporters and we shall not fail you. We have listened to your charges, I thought I could scribble something to respond. But have listened to your charges you took away all that I wanted to say in our response.
“But what I would like to do is to re-emphasise to assure you that the days of factions in APC Rivers are over.”
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