*’Since 2011 When I Was Campaign DG, Amaechi Has Not Won Any Election In Rivers’
*Says He Feels Bad That Fubara Will Not Get Second Term
Lending his voice to political conversation in the country, Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Barrister Nyesom Wike, today (4 August) made a bold claim, saying that it would be difficult for former Vice President and now African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to win the 2027 election with a running mate like Rotimi Amaechi.
To Wike, if Abubakar’s electoral arsenal is anchored in any way on Amaechi getting winning votes, then his victory is dead on arrival.
Abubakar, more popularly known as Atiku, picked Amaechi, who had contested -and lost- against him after the ADC primary in May this year amid allegations by Amaechi that the internal poll was replete with irregularities.
Wike, who served as Amaechi’s Chief of Staff when the latter was Rivers State governor, has for many years now become political enemies with his former boss even as both titans continue to wrestle for supremacy in the oil-rich South-South state –tussles that, sometimes, see their followers engage in violence.
Speaking during his monthly media chat in Abuja, the Minister said: “Amaechi as the running mate to Atiku, I have come to know that it will be difficult for Atiku to be President.
“In all the calculations if you are choosing a vice presidential candidate, a running mate, I’m sure that the only factor that made him to choose Amaechi may be financial.
“If it’s in terms of bringing votes to support Atiku, he is dead on arrival.”
Obviously a politician with a sense of history, Wike recalled how the late former President Muhammadu Buhari could not garner the constitutionally required 25 percent votes in Rivers State in past elections with Amaechi as his campaign Director General (DG).
He said: “I was a Minister of State while he was governor and I defeated him very well. He has never won an election since after 2011 when I was the DG of the campaign.
“He was the DG of Buhari in 2015 and Buhari did not get 25 percent; he was the DG in 2019 when he was a Minister and Buhari did not get 25 percent.”
Waving off claims that Amaechi is an asset to the people of Rivers State and Niger Delta, Wike laughed off the idea.
“Is he an asset to Rivers State and South-South? You must be a former governor that still has followers, you must say when you were a Minister what did you bring to the people of your state? As a Minister what did your government do to impact the lives of Rivers people? So it’s not about being former this or that.
“In the South-South, which state will he have impact on and that’s why we say that the way we are… just one month ago, this was the same man who said the ADC primary was marred by irregularities and corruption, the same man now is benefitting from the corruption and irregularities of the same system,” the Minister claimed.
‘I Feel Bad That Fubara Won’t Get Second Term’
On the issue of his relationship with Governor Sim Fubara of Rivers State, the governor’s hitherto estranged political godfather revealed that it was his intention at the beginning to see Fubara run for a second term, in 2027, but that acrimony and subsequent developments had now seen the governor lose out.
Wike and Fubara had endured a frosty relationship since the governor assumed office in 2023, but they recently reconciled their differences.
Amid the crisis between Wike and Fubara, the governor, who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lost in the party’s primary election. Kingsley Chinda, strongly believed to be Wike’s pick, will fly the APC flag next year.
Addressing the matter and its aftermath, Wike said: “We don’t like the truth. I flagged off the Ring Road and I said that day that ‘if you complete this road, nobody will stop your second term’. How do you endorse somebody more than that?”
Asked if he wanted Fubara to do a second term, Wike said: “That’s right, you have to build a system and he’s from our political structure. There is nowhere in this world, be it in the Republican or Democrat, you have groups to talk about the party. Every group will have its own leader but that does not make you a godfather.
“At the end of the fight, I have not lost anything but you (Fubara, that is) have lost because your intentions were to go for a second tenure but you are not going.”
The Minister maintained that he loves Fubara and feels bad that he will not run for a second term.
“Those of us who love you, Fubara, feel so bad. If I don’t love him, why will I support him? That’s the point that I’m making: that, of all these things, who has lost?”
*PHOTO CAPTION: Wike.
