Presidential candidate of the Labour party (LP), Peter Obi, on Wednesday met with Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state, amid reports of the 2023 presidential election crisis rocking the country’s main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The New Diplomat gathered that Obi met with Wike at the Governor’s House in Port Harcourt.
Obi arrived at the Governor’s villa at about 11am and immediately went into a closed-door meeting with Wike.
It is however unclear the agenda of the meeting as of press time.
Meanwhile, the meeting comes on the heels of reports indicating that the PDP is currently passing through stormy waters.
It was reported that many members of the party were aggrieved about the nomination of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state as the Vice-Presidential candidate of the party.
Before the final decision was made, Wike, Okowa and Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa-Ibom were initially considered by the screening panel set up by the PDP to nominate a vice-presidential candidate for the PDP presidential flagbearer.
An internal source who spoke with the press said Wike is not happy about how he lost out of the presidential and the vice-presidential slot of the party.
However, the Rivers Governor had at several times noted he is happy in PDP and nothing can make him dump the party.
The New Diplomat also recalls that the meeting came after Wike had carpeted Obi for dumping the PDP few days to the party’s presidential primary election.
Wike, shortly after Obi decamped from the PDP to Labour Party had said the former governor does not stand a chance of winning the party’s presidential primary if he had remained in the PDP, saying Obi, a Vice-presidential candidate of the PDP in 2019 has portrayed himself as the one without character and integrity with his exit from the main opposition party.
According to the him, Obi had not won a single election since he left the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), the party under which he became governor.
Meanwhile, the ongoing political horse-trading follows the momentum that Peter Obi has since been building among young Nigerian voters since he joined the Labour Party.
