By Damola Emmanuel
Like he has been doing since he fell out with leaders of his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, former Rivers State Governor, now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Barrister Nyesom Wike, fired from all cylinders, Wednesday night, as he dared his party to expel him for serving in the All Progressives Congress, APC, administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
In a no-holds-barred interview with Channels Television, the fearless politician told Seun Okinbaloye, anchor of the station’s flagship programme, Politics Today, that he dared the PDP leadership to suspend or discipline him.
Insisting that he had not seen any PDP leader who will suspend or expel him, the vocal Minister snarled:
“Who will discipline me? I should be the one calling for the discipline of these people who violated the party’s constitution, in the way that the party supported rotation.
“Who will suspend me? I want to dare anybody,” Wike said.
Maintaining that he could not be sanctioned for working for the ruling All Progressives Congress, Wike said Nigeria was bigger than any party or anybody, and that he followed due process when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu nominated him as minister.
He said he consulted every tier of his party’s leadership and they all told him to answer the call for national duty. He categorically stated that he wrote his governor in Rivers State, the Rivers State PDP Chairman, his ward chairman and, indeed, everybody that mattered in the party, intimating them with the offer by the President. And they all told him to accept the offer.
In another breath, Wike said he was not working for the APC but President Tinubu.
His words: “I am not working for the APC. I am working for Tinubu who has trust in me to help him deliver the Renewed Hope (Agenda). I owe nobody any apology at all. I was in the PDP and I worked for Ahmed Bola Tinubu to become the President of Nigeria.”
Wike laughed cynically when his interviewer drew his attention to the fact that his name was in list of APC bigwigs drawn for the campaign council for the re-election of Governor Duoye Diri of Bayelsa State in November.
He insisted that he was a PDP chieftain working in the APC government of President Tinubu for the ultimate good of Nigeria.
“I want to support Asiwaju (Tinubu) to finish well,” he declared.
In any case, he said he saw nothing strange in a PDP chieftain serving in an APC government, citing the example of the late Chief Bola Ige of the Alliance for Democracy, AD, who then President Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP appointed as Minister for Justice.
He also told his interviewer pointedly that he owed nobody any apology, adding that rather, it was the leadership of PDP that needed to apologise to him and his friends in G5.
With an air of victory and self-satisfaction, Wike said the results of the 2023 presidential elections vindicated him and his G5 group. He merely stopped short of declaring that they were the real power brokers in PDP.
“We are just waiting for the presidential panel to finish,” he continued, “you will know who actually are those who are working well for the party.
“How can anybody talk about expelling me? A state that brought a governor? A state that brought three senators? A state that produced 32 House of Assembly members? A state that produced 11 out of 13 House of Representatives?
“The person that would suspend me is the one that couldn’t produce a governor? Is he the one that couldn’t produce three senators?
“I have not seen that person, with all due respect. Nobody will do it. So, the issue of they will do it does not arise.”
