THE governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, has claimed that the national chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Iyorchia Ayu, manipulated the party’s presidential primary and did everything possible for him not to emerge as the candidate for the 2023 general elections.
The primary held in May 2022.
In an interview with some select journalists in Port-Harcourt monitored, Wike said Ayu never wanted him as the party’s flagbearer and worked against him.
“There’s nothing Ayu did not do for me not to emerge as the PDP candidate. Ayu did everything to manipulate the system to ensure that all the numbers did not add up,” he said, in the monitored broadcast.
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On whether he would be quitting the party due to the crisis, the governor said, “I have always told people that if anybody thinks we will leave PDP, foul. We will fight at the party. We are not like them when in 2014, they walked out from Eagle Square. They’ve forgotten. They walked out and joined APC.
“Did they remain to fight inside the party? But we remained; they ran away. Now, there is a fight in the party we will not run. We will fight it in this party.
“Those who run away from the fight are weak people. We will not. So everybody should know this is the state where we are. So that nobody tells you all kinds of stories.”
The former presidential aspirant said some people in the party thought they were too intelligent than others, which he said was the main reason behind the party’s crisis.
“Some people will always think that they are too clever. They came up with ‘zone only the party offices, don’t zone the elective offices.’ How can you zone only party offices and you won’t zone elective offices?
“Some people believe they are too intelligent than others. But some of us say, ‘look, this at the end of the day will cause a crisis for us.’ ”
The governor said the party should respect its constitution, stating that elective and party offices must be zoned.
He wondered why the former PDP Board of Trustee (BOT) chairman, Walid Jibrin, would be pressured to resign, while Ayu had refused to step down as national chairman.
A reporter with the ICIR
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