Tonye Cole was the 2023 governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers. In this interview, he speaks on recent political developments in Rivers State and the forthcoming general election, among other issues

How many factions are there in APC in your state and which faction do you belong to?

The truth of the matter is that Rivers State has always been in the headlines for factions within parties, whether it’s in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or the APC. And today, as we stand, we have the APC recognised by the court, which is led by Emeka Beke. That’s the one on which I ran as governor.

Then you have an amalgamation of PDP and APC, which we’re not sure about. Some of them are PDP but they wear APC clothes. Some of them are APC but they wear PDP clothes.

That’s faction led by Okocha. We have to clean up these things. Everybody must know that if there is one party in Rivers State and that party is APC, then it belongs to one political body. Right now it doesn’t.

So, being a two-time gubernatorial candidate, I’m the highest ranking APC member, authentic within the state, which means that I have the responsibility today to begin to bring APC together, clean it up, clear it and work as one body. That’s where it is and that’s exactly what I’m doing. The work that I have to do now is ensure that everything that has been done by the APC prior to now must be done properly.

Would you say you’re succeeding?

It’s work in progress, so it requires consultation. It requires understanding. It requires meeting with the national, meeting with the state and just bringing everybody together to understand that we represent a people.

And if the people feel that we are riding roughshod over them and we don’t care about what they say, we don’t care about what they think, we don’t care whether they agree or not, we’ll have a problem down the line.

For democracy to survive in Rivers State and Nigeria as a whole, you cannot ride roughshod over people. The people matters; their opinions matters and you have to carry them along.

What do you make of the political maneuverings, cross-carpeting into the new party, African Democratic Congress (ADC), and their ability, as they claim, to defeat the APC at the federal level?

My position politically has always been that competition is necessary, and I believe that if we’re going to have development, then there must be competition. Each time, every party, by virtue of being political, wants to be the dominant party. That’s fine but it wasn’t foolish when somebody said that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This means that you must be able to balance it with a strong opposition. So, I have no problem with competition at all. I grew as we did in business because we had competition. Competition took us to where we are.

So, I love competition, which means that if there is a second party, the ADC, and it can compete actively against our party, the APC, that’s beautiful. It will make us better. But if we have a one-party state, I don’t think it’s good for Nigeria. I think that we’re too complex a country, and for us to end up in a one-party state, I always believe that there are people who are going to get up and say, no we’re not going to do this.

So, I don’t think we’re ever going to get there. What you have to encourage as journalists, as politicians, all of us as Nigerians, is to make sure that the parties begin to give a clear ideology of who they stand for and what they believe, so that people can begin to align with one party or the other.

What we have today is that all parties look alike, which is why people can get up from one party today, move to another. That is why you can cross-carpet anyhow because there’s no ideology. What people are looking for is a party that will get them to power. Power is the only ideology that, as politicians, we look for, and that is wrong.

That does not serve the people. So, for me, the Nigerian press and Nigerian people, must begin to demand from politicians, whether APC, PDP, LP, ADC, what their core ideologies are. The parties should let the people know where they stand on issues, so that they will begin to choose, as a people, who they support. That’s where we need to get to.

What do you make of the claims that the ruling party is deploying state apparatus to weaken opposition parties?

First of all, those claims have always been there. It’s something that we always see as you get towards elections. I was a victim of that from Rivers State government and the last government threw so many court cases at me just to distract me and all of that.

So, it’s one of those unfortunate political tactics that cases will be thrown at you. You will be distracted. They will try to stop you. You cannot allow that to stop you. As politicians, we’re used to it. They will throw cases at you.

What you need to do is just focus on the goal. At the end of the day, your goal should be that you serve the people regardless of what they bring at you. If you know you’re innocent about it, you will come out. So, I’ve never worried about the cases that have been thrown against me. I just stay focused on the goal ahead of me.

So, I believe that political parties will do that. They will throw cases. They will chase you. They will try to use every tactic under the sun to stop you from winning. But that shouldn’t deter you. If you’re in this business and you know why you’re there, you will stay focused.

What people are looking for is a party that will get them to power and that is wrong. That does not serve the people

You have always been with a former governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, but now, he’s in ADC and you’re still in APC. Why didn’t you go with him and are you going to run again?

I’ve always had a lot of respect for Amaechi and others, and I’ve consistently said that he has a goal, an ambition where he wants to go and so do I. I have my own ambition and I have my own goals. Nobody can take away the fact that he brought me into politics. Somebody must bring you into politics.

Where we stand today, he is interested in running for president and he has gone to pursue that and that’s great. I am interested in running for governor in Rivers State and I’m staying there. That’s my focus. That’s where we are. So, definitely, I’m definitely running.

Some have said that the peace in Rivers State is like the peace of the graveyard. How do you respond to that?

They say a day in politics is like a hundred years. Things change very rapidly. So, it is only when Simi Fubara gets back into office and the apparatus that has been put around him begins to act, that we will know whether or not he has been totally subdued or whether there is still a fight in him, we have no idea.

What I can say is that if we go back to everything that started this whole fight between Simi and Wike, jt was always about structure – who has the structure, who’s taking structure and all of that.

So, if we just put two and two together, it would not surprise me that everything continues to be about structure. Now, who is influencing who? Whose structure is in charge and all of that is anybody’s guess.

But this fight was about structure and it will still be about structure. Come 2027, it will be about structure. If there’s any fight that has been ongoing in Rivers State from day one till now, it’s about structure.

You said you will contest again; do you have the structure to be able to challenge Wike, who seems to have the structure?

The beautiful thing about life is that everybody has a structure. It just depends on how they want to deploy it. So, we all have structures. For me, the structure that I work on has always been the structure of the people.

The first time I came into Rivers State politics, what I did was to go into every ward, into places where politicians had not been to, to sit down with people and hear them out and listen to them, understand their grievances and begin to recruit them, both emotionally, spiritually and physically, that we are going to make sure that their voice is heard.

That’s grassroots movement. I went to every single ward in the state; that is a structure in itself. You have to now translate all of that and move that into a political structure. That’s a different challenge and that’s a work that will continue to happen. So, I’m not worried about anybody saying that, oh, I hold this structure or that structure.

That’s what it’s about. Everybody has their political structure. At the end of the day, we have an election coming forward. When we get to that election, we’ll see how it’s going to play out. For now, I have no idea how that is going to turn out. But that day is coming and when it comes, we will see.

You have been quoted as saying that the presidential system is not good for Nigeria and that we need to build an African-Nigerian focused political system. Can you speak to that?

I have studied political systems that work versus the ones that have not worked, and I have found out that the ones that work are the ones that have been built based on the cultural ideology of the people. They understand it and then they build up with that.

If you look at the French democracy, they understand it starting from when they had the French Revolution and then they built it. It’s called democracy.

It is very different from the British one. The British one was on monarchy and lords, and then they had to bring in the people and they call it the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Commons being the people having a voice.

They had to change their democracy for it to work. America was based on freedom. They didn’t want to do anything. So, whether I come from Nigeria, Canada, Germany, wherever, and I get into America, I can be elected governor, senator, councillor, wherever I live.

It’s built on that principle. Nigeria imported the democracy of America and put it on us and totally ignored our cultural biases. And that’s why we have an issue. We need to go back to our cultural biases and begin to develop an electoral system that we understand and move with it.