Big time entrepreneur and CEO of Sahara Energy, Tonye Cole, has emerged as governorship candidate of the APC in the Rivers state primaries of the party. He will be challenging PDP’s Nyesom Wike, the incumbent governor, who was nominated few hours in the PDP primaries to go for a second term.
Cole’s emergence means that the states elections in 2019 will be upland versus riverine battle for the seat of power. Cole, recently resigned as CEO of Sahara Energy to contest the state’s APC primaries.
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The Rivers state PDP adopted indirect primaries as their preferred mode of selecting their candidate for the election. Announcing the result at Igboukwu Field, venue of the gubernatorial primaries, Chairman of the APC Gubernatorial Primaries Committee for Rivers State, Jafaru Lawal Isa (Rtd), said Cole got a total of 3, 321 votes to beat other aspirants to the position. The other gubernatorial aspirants, include Dawari George who scored 491 votes while Dumo Lulu-Briggs scored 38 votes. Senator Magnus Ngei Abe scored only one vote while a total of 18 votes were declared invalid.
But Abe conducted his own primaries where he too won outstandingly, an indication of a divided APC in the state.
Ignatius Chukwu
