“The days of playing Father Christmas with the votes of Rivers State are over,” the governor who appears ready to play a “spoiler” declares
Governor of oil-rich Rivers state, Nyesom Wike, has given latest warning to presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, to come over to meet him or suffer defeat in the 2023 election.
Platforms Africa reports that Wike who spoke for the umpteenth time on the riveting crisis within the party, since he lost the bid for the ticket to represent the party at next year’s presidential election, declared that the days of playing Father Christmas with the votes of Rivers State are over.
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Speaking during the flag-off of the 11th flyover project, which was performed by a former governor of Cross River State, Donald Duke, at the Rumuola- Ikwerre Road-Rumuokwuta Roundabout in the Obio Akpor Local Government Area of the state, Wiks presented himself as the beautiful bride that must be courted for any political fortune.
“It’s not to say ‘I’m supporting our candidate.’ How many people have you brought to help your candidate? We are here every day bringing people to join our party and you are there following your candidate from Abuja to Adamawa. Is it there you’ll win the votes? Come back home,” Wike told his audience on a day he announced that Obiokpo, his local government alone, could deliver more than 600,000 votes, firmly in his clutches to anyone he wished.
There seems no love lost between the governor and former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, who bested him to pick the PDP ticket on May 28, after the party’s primary election in Abuja, with all attempts at rapprochement by various interested parties in the party seemingly failing to make any substantial headway.
Warning that the PDP was at the risk of losing the state, which he said was critical to winning the presidential election, Wike said nobody in his right senses would discountenance the state, with close to four million votes, urging those interested to reach out to him.
In what is interpreted as throwing shades at those presently supporting the PDP candidate, Wike dared them to show that they had the content to lead Atiku to victory during the election, he pointed to how he had practically collapsed all other political parties into the PDP fold in the state, by the sheer attraction to what he referred to as the ongoing infrastructural development, which made them believe the party was a better party platform.
Wike said: “We have collapsed every other party. Every day people from All Progressives Congress are joining our party. We are here doing that and some people are in Abuja; ask them how many persons have they brought to the party.
“This local government alone, Obio Akpor, where I come from; we registered not less than 600, 000 voters. This local government beats two states in their electoral strength. So we are not a state that you can take for granted, not to talk about the local government where I come from,’’ Wike warned.
“I believe that they must know us here because we have what it takes to deliver. They must come and know us. I’m not going to find anybody. You must come here. You can’t take six hundred and something thousand votes away from my local government; you can’t take 3.2 million votes from my state just like that.’
“If we were Father Christmas before, we won’t be Father Christmas again? You must tell me what is there for me if I should vote. So nobody should bother himself. At the appropriate time we will talk to our people and our people will understand. If you say we don’t exist, we will tell you that you don’t exist. I am not a son to anybody; I am a son of Rivers state. I am working to attract what will benefit Rivers state.”
