The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State, Pastor Tonye Cole, has picked the Deputy National Secretary of APC, Chief Victor Giadom, as his running mate for the 2019 election in the Niger Delta state.
Rivers Publicity Secretary of APC, Chris Finebone, made the disclosure on Saturday in Port Harcourt, while revealing that Cole, a billionaire businessman and co-founder of Sahara Group, announced the choice of Giadom, while briefing APC leaders during a meeting in the Rivers state capital.
Giadom, an indigene of Bera-Ogoni in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers state, where Senator Magnus Abe, who represents Rivers Southeast Senatorial District/governorship aspirant on APC platform, also hails from.
The newly-announced running mate is a former Chairman of Gokana local government council and he later served as Rivers Commissioner for Works in the Rotimi Amaechi’s administration between 2011 and 2015.
Giadom also served as the Director-General of the Greater Together Governorship Campaign Organisation of APC’s Dr. Dakuku Peterside in 2015.
The running mate replaced Nigeria’s Ambassador to Netherlands, Oji Ngofa, as a member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of APC, with Ngofa recently emerging as the party’s candidate for Rivers Southeast senatorial district for next year’s poll.
Cole was quoted as saying during the stakeholders’ meeting in Port Harcourt: “The choice of Chief Victor Giadom as my running mate was arrived at, after a careful and exhaustive consideration of an array of equally-notable personalities in the party.
“He (Giadom) came out tops on all considerations, especially his unalloyed and untainted loyalty, unrelenting hard work and invaluable experience as a former outstanding Local Government Chairman, former Commissioner for Works, former Governorship Campaign Director-General and presently a member of the National Working Committee (NWC) of our great party, the APC.”
Finebone also stated that with the choice of Giadom, the governorship candidate of APC in Rivers had started to assemble a crack dream team for the 2019 governorship election in the state.
The former Secretary to the Rivers State Government, SSG (Abe) and his supporters are still protesting against the emergence of Cole through indirect primary, backed by members of NWC of APC, as the standard bearer of the parry in Rivers, while they were at the national secretariat of the party in Abuja on Friday, in continuation of their protests, which they started in Port Harcourt.
Abe insisted he was not aware that Cole was a member of APC and that Amaechi with some leaders of the party would not sit in Lagos to force a governorship candidate on APC in Rivers, while declaring that he remained the standard bearer of the party in the state, having emerged through direct primary, backed by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of APC.
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