Speculation over the defection of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state has ended after the governor met with Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC and other officials of the party in Port Harcourt, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has said.
Governor Wike hosted Tinubu and other APC apparatchiks in the Rivers government house ahead of the party’s presidential campaign yesterday.
As the leader of the G5 PDP governors not in support of the candidacy of Atiku Abubakar, the PDP presidential candidate, not a few insist that Wike’s association with the opposition party has become too close for comfort, even though the governor has not openly declared for APC.
According to a statement issued by the Rivers state chapter of the PDP on Thursday, and signed by Dr. Leloonu Nwibubasa, the party said the meeting Governor Wike had with Tinubu and other APC top shots has ended speculation on where he stands.
The PDP said: “Today marked the end of all speculations by Nigerians and hypocritical denials by Governor Nyesom Wike of his current political standing as Wike play host to the APC presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the council chamber of the Rivers State Government House with all members of the Rivers State executive council present.
“This has not only justified the consistent position of the Rivers state Presidential Campaigns Council that Governor Wike who has wholly engaged himself in anti-party activities, has criminalized the mandate of the People’s Democratic Party who offered him the platform upon which he was elected governor.
“The utterances of Governor Wike in time past against President Buhari’s policies and poor performance in governance and the manner in which the Governor vilified and spoke despicably about Bola Ahmed Tinubu for telling Nigerians that he wants to continue Buhari’s legacy of good works, is diagnostic that he has no single strand of integrity and credibility left in him for turning around not just to embrace but to consummate his marriage to a party he described as Cancer.
“The show of shame is seen to have been ignorantly celebrated by his minions who are all soon to become internally displaced politicians if they don’t return to good reasoning.
“The people of Rivers state would have benefited more if the Five hundred million Naira that was disbursed for the failed mobilization of people to the APC presidential rally was voted into SMEs for wealth and job creation for the surging population of unemployed youths or for the payments of retirees benefits and gratuity.
“It’s now obvious why Governor Wike ran to the courts to seek judicial asylum knowing he was about playing his highly predictable last game of desecrating the mandate of the People’s Democratic Party.
Governor Wike had approached the court to stop the PDP from suspending him, but the party said he cannot remain in the party and continue to break the rules.
“Governor Wike as a lawyer should know that you can not suspend the hands of justice in perpetuity while you continue to break all known laws that govern a system. The day of reckoning is here. The leadership of the party must act to save what is left of the PDP in Rivers State,” the statement said.
