Rivers APC produces two governorship candidates
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers state produced two governorship candidates in parallel primary elections conducted on Sunday.
A faction of the party loyal to Magnus Abe, senator representing Rivers south-east, adopted direct primary election while the faction loyal to Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation, went for indirect primaries.
There were four aspirants in all seeking to pick the party’s governorship ticket in 2019.
Abe’s faction produced him as the governorship candidate while the Amaechi-led faction produced Tonye Cole, former executive director of Sahara Group.
Sam Eligwe, the returning officer for the Abe faction, said the senator won with 144,929 votes, while Lulu-Briggs came a distant second with 3,444 votes.
Dawari George followed with 1606 votes while Cole got 882 votes.
For the Amaechi faction, Cole had polled 1,236 votes (as of the time of filing this report) while George polled 491 votes. Luru-Briggs and Abe came third and fourth with 31 and 1 vote respectively.
I have the utmost respect for Senator Magnus Abe but I think he should concede this one for Amaechi. In the past few years, Magnus has shown exceptional capacity for leadership and ability. His day will come.