Jonathan’s wife aborts APC leaders’ visit to Rivers

Thousands of Governor Chibuike Amaechi’s supporters, who stormed the Port Harcourt International Airport, Omagwa, yesterday, to give leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) a rousing welcome, went home disappointed. Leaders of APC, including General Mohammadu Buhari (retd) and Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu were billed to visit the state yesterday, in what many believed was part of the efforts to woo Governor Amaechi to join the party. The first shocker Amaechi’s supporters got was that they were stopped at the airport roundabout. Apart for the chairmen of the local government area and few others, who were able to enter the airport, security men made sure that their movements were restricted to the roundabout. Amaechi’s supporters, made up of men, youths and market women, drawn from the 23 local government areas of the state and their chairmen, started trooping to the airport as early as 7am and waited till about 3.45pm when information filtered in that the visit had been cancelled. The obviously hungry supporters started going back home in groups, most of them wearing long faces. Daily Sun findings revealed that the cancellation of the visit may not be unconnected with the clash with Patience Jonathan’s earlier travel schedule to Abuja, through the same airport at about 11.30am. She was returning to Abuja, after the burial last Friday of her mother, Mrs Oba, who died in a motor accident in Port Harcourt some months ago. A source disclosed that it was because of her travel arrangement that the APC leaders decided to shift their arrival time to the Port Harcourt airport to about 1pm, to avoid any clash. But the First Lady, whose security details were already at the airport, paving the way for her trip back to Abuja, were yet to show up at about 4pm when the reporter left the airport. A source disclosed that the airspace was closed, making it impossible for planes to land or take off, pending when the First Lady would have travelled back to Abuja yesterday. But when journalists contacted the acting Publicity Secretary of APC, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on the cancellation of the visit, he attributed it to what he called, “coordination and logistics reasons