Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State, on Thursday, March 9, 2023, has declared that the internal war in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is not over yet, revealing that the next phase is about “chasing the vampires” out of the party.
Wike, a member of the G5, is the group of five aggrieved PDP governors who abstained from campaigning for Atiku because his candidacy allegedly violated the party’s constitution.
Wike made the disclosure while speaking at the commissioning of Igwuruta internal roads in the Ikwerre Local Government Area, LGA, of Rivers State on Wednesday, March 9, 2023.
The PDP’s presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar was announced as second place winner in a deeply flawed election in which Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was declared the winner by a “compromised” Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
On the fallout of the election, Wike assured PDP supporters the first phase of “the war” is over, adding that the second phase is about to begin.
“The second phase of the war: We must chase out the buccaneers and vampires. We are going to chase them out of the party and take our party and rebuild our party,” Wike said.
“These people left our party in 2014/2015. Our party lost. Again, they have come back, our party has lost again. They’ve destroyed our party.
“We’re going to chase them out of the party. They have no role to play for our party. I told them, agreement is agreement.”
In the build-up to the presidential election, the rift between the G5, a group of five aggrieved PDP governors, including Wike, and the party’s national leadership proved irreconcilable.
Unequivocal about the presidential seat returning to the South, the governor is widely believed to have spearheaded the APC’s rigged win in Rivers with the use of thugs, soldiers, and police to disrupt the elections and bribery and inducement of INEC officials to doctor the results in favour of Bola Tinubu of the APC.
Server observers and sources on the ground in Rivers say that Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party won Rivers State by a landslide. Obi is in court to reclaim his mandate. “We won the February 25 election and we will prove it to Nigerians,” Obi told internal press at a briefing in Abuja on March 2, 2023.
Going further, Wike denied being involved in any anti-party activity, saying he fought for the “unity of the country” in the February 25 poll.
To him, the alleged anti-party actions belong to “them at the national level in PDP”.
Wike pondered what could be “more anti-party” than party members abandoning their constitution’s provisions that talk about the zoning of elective and appointive offices.
“[Between] you that refused to obey the constitution of your party because of impunity, because you think you have the number, you refused to obey the provisions of the constitution of your party, and we that say Nigeria must be one, Nigeria must be united, Nigeria must work for our people, [and] let everybody have hope, who committed anti-party [activities]? They are the ones who committed anti-party [misconduct],” he said.
On Monday, the former Vice President led a “black uniform” protest to the national headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja that also included the PDP National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu; and Atiku’s running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa.
Following INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as the President-elect last Thursday, Atiku slammed the conduct of the elections, saying the umpire’s inability to upload results on the INEC Results Viewing Portal, IReV, is a “rape of democracy”.
Additional reporting by Channels TV.
