The Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, has vowed he would start to campaign for his preferred candidate in the forthcoming 2023 presidential election in January as he further unsettled political camps and parties, following his Thursday’s bold-face remarks.
“From January next year, I will campaign to my people whom they will vote for. So all of you who have been in suspense, saying all manner of things and abusing me, wait January has come”, he said during the commissioning of the tenth flyover at the Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers.
Wike’s comments come amid the shenanigans which had continued to trail the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primary election which the Rivers Governor lost to Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President of Nigeria. Since then, he has opposed the chairmanship of Iyorchia Ayu, alongside four other PDP governors now known as G5.
The G5 had insisted that Ayu must step down for a southerner to emerge as the chairman of the party, as condition to support the 2023 ambition of Atiku.
As things stand, Wike, who has been heavily criticised by the Atiku’s Campaign, has left many within and outside of his party on the edge over his preferred presidential candidate in next year’s poll. Many had equally projected that Wike’s support for Atiku’s 2023 bid is very unlikely even as members of the opposition parties continue to court the Governor to land his support.
Talking tough in his usual self from Obio-Akpor, the Rivers Governor said he would go all out in January 2023 to tell his supporters the presidential candidate to vote for from among the lot vying for the nation’s number one job.
In Wike’s words: “Not only will I tell them where they will vote, I will move from state to state telling them why they should vote the people I said they should vote for. Nothing will happen.
“So all of you, appearing on television, abusing me, don’t waste your sliver again, January has come. Don’t waste your sliver and going on your platform.
“All those telling Nigerians that you use to have forty shoes, you use to have fifty wristwatches, time has come to covert those shoes and wristwatches to vote.
“It’s not to be on the podium and raise your shoe high and raise your wristwatch high, time has come to convert it to vote.
“Those who have never been stabled, moving from PDP to… and there back to PDP, those of you who made campaign in 2015, telling Nigerians if they vote for PDP, they are voting for insurgency, corruption, wait all of us will reply, we will tell Nigerians this thing you said how far what is the system now, is it the same PDP or a new PDP.
“Let me use this opportunity to advise those of you who call yourselves our brothers in Abuja, this 2023 election will confirm to us in Rivers state, who are those that have influence to vote. Those that their people will listen to and vote. It’s not to be in Abuja and tell them whatever you are telling them. Come home, our polling booths are not in Abuja, they are here. Stop telling them lies, What you cannot do say you cannot do.”
