Wike accuses southern PDP governors of betraying regional agreement

…blames them for his failure to emerge as a presidential candidate

Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has blamed Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors for ganging up with vested interest groups to derail the quest for southern Nigeria to produce the next president.

Wike stated this at a grand reception organised by the Rivers people, yesterday, in Port Harcourt to welcome him back from Abuja after the PDP presidential primary.

He recalled there was an agreement by southern governors that the president should come from the South but some governors betrayed the agreement.

He described as shameful the inability of some of those who were part of the agreement to stick to the agreement when it mattered most. He accused them of selling out and frustrating the collective efforts that would have secured the PDP presidential ticket by him for the South.

“I contested in an election (primary) based on the principle and agreement with all Southern governors and leaders of the South that presidency should go to the South this period.

“We (Rivers people) have done our part. We never betrayed anybody because it is not in our blood to betray. But it is a shame to those people, some of the governors from the South, they are the people that were used to sabotage our course.”

Wike said it was disheartening that some governors from the South due to their inordinate ambition could jettison the collective interest of the people they claim to represent.

“A region ganged up, but your own region cannot gang up. You became tools to be used against the interest of your people, and you think you have won, you have lost. You will continue to be perpetual slaves. Rivers people, you don’t need to bother yourselves. PDP needs us. If they say they don’t need us, they should wait.”

Wike said with the presidential primary over, and given his pledge to work for whoever emerged, Rivers State will work to deliver PDP and all its candidates in the 2023 general election.

The governor recalled that in 2019, despite the failure of the candidate he supported to clinch the ticket, Rivers State gave PDP massive votes and refused to negotiate with the All Progressives Congress (APC) to give them 25 per cent votes.

Wike said he had even told the winner of the PDP presidential primary, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, that most of those hanging around him do not have electoral value.

Speaker, Rivers State House of Assembly, Ikuinyi-Owaji Ibani, in his remarks, described the governor as an emancipator, who has solved a particularly nagging problem in Nigeria, that’s the issue of minority question.

Chairman, PDP Rivers State, Desmond Akawor, commended Wike for his resilience and that the entire state and the Niger Delta are happy that he spoke for them.