The All Progressives Congress (APC), Rivers State chapter, has said the Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, would meet his political waterloo next year.It described his governorship ambition as a pipe dream.
Rivers APC, through its Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, noted in Port Harcourt that members of the ruling party in the state (APC) would be happy to have Wike, the former Chief of Staff, Government House, as the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), thereby making it easy to emerge victorious.
APC said: “We have noted Wike’s boast that he will beat other candidates, even in their wards, in the governorship election. This is nothing, but the blowing of hot air by a political Lilliputian, who seems to have forgotten how he achieved the little relevance that is now intoxicating him.
“Wike owes his position as a junior minister to the Rivers State APC leader, Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi. The same Amaechi, who made Wike, will politically un-make him during the 2015 governorship election. Wike is living in the past, as eminent persons that made him somebody politically are now in the APC.
“We know Wike’s tricks and we know how to cage him, when necessary. So, without us, he is a nobody politically in Rivers State. Wike is the easiest candidate for us to beat and that was why we fasted for him to emerge as the PDP’s candidate in the poll. We are continuing in prayer along this line. The thrashing that Wike and the PDP will receive from the APC during the election will be so heavy that he may be forced to consider premature retirement from politics.”
The ruling party in Rivers reminded the two-term Chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government that he and Amaechi, the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), are from the Ikwerre ethnic nationality, in the multi-ethnic state.
APC said: “Wike has a lot of factors counting against him. One of these disadvantages is that he is from the Ikwerre axis. The fact remains that no son or daughter of Ikwerre will succeed Governor Amaechi, an Ikwerre, who would have governed Rivers State for eight years by May 2015. So, that rules Wike out.
“The Minister of State for Education has also boasted that the primary and secondary schools Amaechi has built do not exist in other parts of Rivers State, besides Port Harcourt. If Wike is elected, God forbid, he is capable of bulldozing the 23 model secondary schools and the over 300 model primary schools scattered in other local governments, sparing, may be, only those in Port Harcourt.
“Rivers people will not take such a risk with somebody whose only achievement as acting Minister of Education was to ensure that our universities were closed for over six months, while the polytechnics and colleges of education were closed for about one year. Wike should stop wasting his time, because he obviously does not have what it takes to govern Rivers State.”
The ruling party admonished the peace-loving people of the state to support Amaechi and his administration.###
