Politics
Botched campaign: Wike will suffer! He’s finished – Atiku *I’ll get 75 percent in Rivers
Politically, Nyesom Wike, Governor of Rivers State is finished and his future ambition of becoming Nigerian President permanently sealed, Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said on Wednesday.
The position of the former Vice President, was conveyed on Wednesday, via Danial Bwala, spokesman of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council (PDP-PCC), while appearing on The Morning Show, a breakfast programme on Arise Television, while reacting to the botched campaign of the party in Rivers State on the ground of insecurity.
Atiku had on Monday, announced that he would be putting off his presidential campaign in the state to avoid bloodshed, due to a series of actions Wike had allegedly taken, indicating grave implications in that direction, saying going ahead with the already planned activities, would lead to trouble.
Amplifying the development, Bwala, capturing the sentiments in the Atiku camp, which has recently indicated that it has pulled off its gloves and gone for the bare-knuckle battle, unlike the initial pillow-fight approach it earlier adopted, by pleading with the governor, and the G-5 Integrity Group he leads, fired from all cylinders during the outing.
Regretting that Wike had continued toeing the hardline position, even after the entire PDP leadership tried to placate him, which had now led to the thwarting of the presidential campaign, he stressed that the initial move to appeal to the governor, was more of trying to bring everyone on board and not for his electoral value and his impact in the presidential project of the ex-VP.
Stating that Wike was inconsequential to Atiku’s victory, he said, Buhari won the presidential elections on two occasions in Nigeria without winning the state, adding that in this case, the PDP would sweep the state with nothing less than 75 per cent votes, without the governor, as Rivers was not only the soul of the part, but had benefitted more than any other state from the party.
His words: “Buhari did not win Rivers State, but he won elections. But we’re going to get 75 per cent of the votes in Rivers, because if you go down to the field, they want this fellow to leave that place so that they can rest. He’s kind of a lame-duck. You see, at the time of your second term, you’re less popular than the first term. He has money to bring media attention to what he does. But if you sit down with the people, I believe that on the day of the election, there would be members of his household that will vote for Atiku.
“How can Rivers State not vote for PDP? That is the party they can claim ownership. That is the party that brought blessing to them from 1999 till date. I don’t think there is any part of the country in terms of geo-political zone that has benefitted more from the PDP than the South South. Are they going to leave that to vote for the party that is unknown? Are they going to throw away all that because of one man that is fizzling away and disappearing to the oblivion? Certainly not! Because, the people of Rivers are intelligent, they know what they want, and they know when to decide on what they want.
“Wike is a great man in the sense of the respect we give to everyone. Wike may have done well for the party in the past, but he has destroyed his legacy. That is the summary of it all…I’m telling you that he’ll regret when he comes out by saying, I’d have done things better.
“When you have power, you must exercise it with dignity, candour and honour. He has destroyed his political future, let me be honest with you. This is a man who is seeking to run for presidency sometime in the future. He has cancelled his image in the entire region of the country and he’s cancelling in other parts of the country.”
Justice Haruna Tsammani, on Monday killed the attempt by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic (PDP) and Peter Obi, his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, both presidential candidates, respectively in the February 25 election to get Nigerians watch the proceedings at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, currently sitting in Abuja, live.
The court court, ruling on the plea that originated from the former Vice President, who had argued that it would give integrity to the process and was later joined by Obi, in a unanimous ruling, held that the application was without merit, adding that televising court proceedings is not provided for in any extant law in the country.
Tsammani, Chairman of the five-man panel of Court of Appeal Justices, sitting as PEPT, who read the lead ruling, while adopting the arguments of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, his All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which declared him winner of the election and which also railed against the move, agreed that it would not make the outcome of their decisions any cleaner.
To him, the court sitting in public did not mean that it should sit in a stadium or in marketplace and that there was no way televising the proceedings could advance the interest of fair hearing for parties or advance the interest of the petitioners in relation to issues raised in their petition, adding that granting the request by Atiku and the PDP could trivialise the serious business of the court.
Orji Uzor Kalu, former Governor of Abia State and current Chief Whip of the Senate, may be kissing his quest to lead the National Assembly in Nigeria by becoming 10th session Senate President goodbye, if the attempt to strip him of his All Progressives Congress (APC) identity succeeds.
Kalu, seen as one of the front runners for the nation’s number three citizen, was among the party stalwarts suspended by the ruling party on Thursday, alongside Ken Nnamani, former Senate President, Geoffrey Onyeama, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Sullivan Chime, former Governor of Enugu State.
Alongside former Speaker of Enugu state House of Assembly, Hon Eugene Odo; Director General Voice of Nigeria, Osita Okechukwu and former Commissioner in Enugu state, Joe Mammel, the APC bigwigs, who had earlier been slammed with their fate shortly after the 2023 general elections, had their suspension sustained by the party’s South East caucus.
The ratification of the suspension of the chieftains from Enugu and Abia States, who were initially slammed for allegedly engaging in anti-party activities, according to the APC Zonal Secretariat came after South East Executive Meeting on April 16, 2023.
Ijeomah Arodiogbu, National Vice Chairman (South East), who gave the reason for the action, as the need to enforce discipline in the party, in order to strengthen APC in the zone, listed other names to include: SA to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Flavour Eze, former chairman of the party in the state, Ben Nwoye; former deputy state chairman, A. C. Udeh; Obodoeze Ocho; Chukwudi Igwe; Kingsley Uduji; former Military Governor of the state, Joe Orji; Maduka Arum (A.K.A Mama) and Chidera Obed.
Others suspended alongside Kalu in Abia, included Sam Nkeire, Uche Sampson Ogah, former Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Senator Nkechi Nworgu, amongst others.
Ezeanyawu Michael, spokesman of the party in Enugu State, while stating that it was the right thing to do, said: “I want to further use this opportunity to call on the APC leadership, at both the state and national levels, not to relent in its efforts to rid the party of saboteurs.”
Former Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Akpabio, on Monday emerged from a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Aso Rock villa in Abuja, with a definite message to Nigerians – I will introduce something new, if elected as the new Senate President.
Akpabio, who left as the Minority Leader after losing his return bid in 2019 to take up appointment as Minister of Niger Delta, flaunted his credentials as governor, where he claimed to have made significant contributions to infrastructure, stating that he would be an “uncommon transformer” as the head of the nation’s legislature.
He told State House Correspondents after the meeting: “It is well known that Akpabio is a results-driven individual. You will remember that when I was a governor, I made significant contributions to infrastructure, education, social issues, and human empowerment.
“I intend to bring a lot of reforms into the senate, in the ways and manners we do business, to assist the next administration to succeed. We will be very thorough in doing everything; we’ll bring about loyalty to the constitution.
“The restiveness that we are seeing across the nation, we’ll do our best to make good laws and to assist the administration to bring about policies that will empower the youths of the country. I made that promise even on the convention day that being a man who used to turn boys into men and who still does, that I will like to work with the incoming president, who has also shown that example in Lagos state as a governor and thereafter as a leader of the APC in Nigeria.
“So, the youths are in for a very good time, in terms of empowerment, there will be no time for slacking and we’ll restrict a lot of them from being lured into criminality, into brigandage and all that.”
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