The Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and immediate former Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike has finally opened up on the current crisis rocking Rivers State amid the plot to impeach Governor Siminalayi Fubara of the oil-rich state.
Wike, who received the South-South leaders of the party at his office on Tuesday, emphasised the importance of holding his base to maintain his political relevance.
He insisted that a leader loses political significance the moment they lose their base. No amount of slander directed at him, Wike clarified, would cause him to lose sleep; the proper action must be taken.
‘All of us want to be politically relevant; all of us want to maintain our political structure,’ the minister said.
‘Is it not your political structure? Will you allow anybody to just cut you out immediately? Everybody has a base. If you take my base, am I not politically irrelevant?’
Africa Today News, New York reports that the relationship between Wike and Fubara appears to have gone sour following the threat by the Assembly to impeach the governor.
Some have accused Wike of being the brain behind the impeachment plot. The Rivers Assembly Complex was turned into a confusion theatre after fire gutted a section on Sunday night
There was also some drama on Monday morning with the removal of principal officers in the Assembly as gunshots rent the air.
Fubara had stormed the Complex on Monday to see the level of the damage and alleged that he was shot at by the police, an allegation the police said was being probed.
‘In politics, there are a lot of internal wranglings,’ he said.
‘But to come out and say ‘Oh they want to do this against me, it will not work.’ I had every power then to say where this thing is going. So, when things are wrong, you ask questions. It is a party affair. The party knows how they resolve their own mechanism, it is not an ethnic affair.
‘Our party is coming to it, that is what I will say. Every politician has his own interest,’ the former governor added.
Both Wike and Fubara are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But Wike noted that internal wranglings are common in politics and will be settled using the party’s mechanisms.