The Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike has declared that anybody jostling to be President will need to secure votes in Rivers and combine with either Kano or Lagos to stand a chance of emerging victorious.
He said such a crucial position has established the importance of Rivers in the political scheme of the country and nobody would be allowed to undermine it or take it for granted.
Wike made this assertion in a statement by his Special Assistant, Media, Kelvin Ebiri, when spoke at the grand finale of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) local government election campaign at Ulakwo in the Etche Local Government Area on Thursday.
He said: ‘I keep telling the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that no state has given more votes to the party than Rivers.
‘And it is only in Rivers, in the whole of South-South, that the All Progressives Congress (APC) didn’t get 25 percent votes in the 2019 General election. We thought them a lesson’ he boasted.
‘In Nigeria, nobody wins presidency if you didn’t win either Rivers and Lagos or Kano and Lagos together. Rivers is not a state anybody can joke with. Some states went to negotiate with them. Rivers didn’t do it.’
The Ikwerre born Politician also took a swipe at Senator Andrew Uchendu for his alleged comments in the media and wondered what courage he had to talk against the PDP administration that was ending the suffering he inflicted on his people.
He said: ‘I was watching Arise Television the other day and I heard Senator Andrew Uchendu and the Chief Medical Director of University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. The CMD said I asked him to indict the former governor. I don’t know that he has such judicial power. I don’t also know his basis.
‘He (CMD) set up a target. The man was lobbying to be a commissioner where our former party chairman comes from without even doing due consultation. Because I didn’t give him commissioner, he ran and started to abuse me.’
Wike said it was painful that Uchendu spent many years in the National Assembly and was close to the former administration in the state but couldn’t fix the road leading to his village.
He said: “I am going there to flag off the road and to tell his (Uchendu) community, see what your son couldn’t give you. He (Uchendu) has collected the contract from NDDC every year, he abandoned it. I am going to shame him by doing that road.”
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK