Rivers State governor, Mr Rotimi Amaechi, has said that despite recent calls from the top echelons of his party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) over his perceived dispute with President Goodluck Jonathan, nobody can chase him out of the party.
He said this on Thursday, when he featured in an interview programme on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Hardtalk, with Shaun Ley.
He stressed that his ambition now was to pursue the goals for which he was elected.
When asked to confirm his purported ambition to run for the office of the vice president in 2015, which had been said to be the reason he got embroiled in public dispute with President Jonathan, Amaechi said that was just an assumption.
“I didn’t say I want to run for the office of the vice president. I said we must allow 2015 to remain for 2015. Nobody can say by now whether you want to be president or you don’t want to be president.
“Let’s assume that I remain in PDP and want to run for the office of the vice president, will my leaving the PDP not an answer to that assumption?
“Assuming the president wants to run and if the president wants to run and I remain in PDP, then it means that I have no ambition.
“Those who are assuming that I have an ambition may be making a lot of mistakes, because the place to fulfil that ambition will be in another party, but the reason for remaining in PDP is because nobody can chase me out of PDP. I am a member of PDP and I love to remain in PDP.
“What you must know is that I believe in the rule of law. Let’s even assume for the purpose of argument that an ambition exists, nobody has the right to bring down a state just because an ambition exists.
“The president is elected to preside over the state for which he has been elected and I support that. I want everybody to support Mr President to preside for the interest of the country,” Amaechi said.
Also speaking on the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) election, Governor Amaechi said the president did not tell him not to contest or otherwise, adding that he contested because there was no law requesting him to tell the president.
“Nobody advised me not to run. I challenge anybody on that. There is no law that requests me to tell him (the president) that I was going to run.
“I didn’t need to go to the president to tell him I want to run for NGF (presidency), I didn’t need to do that and I didn’t do that and he, in turn, didn’t say I heard you intend to run, and I ran and I didn’t see the president at the ballot.
“The person I saw at the ballot was Jonah Jang and he didn’t object to the fact that I won,” Amaechi said.
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