Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, has declared that he would support a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate if such will cause the party to win the 2023 general election.
This was as he ruled out the possibility of him supporting any All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, even if the person is of Rivers State or Southern Nigerian extraction.
According to a statement by his media aide Kelvin Ebiri, Wike made the declaration during an interview with BBC Pigin at the Government House, Port Harcourt.
The governor said the PDP has not taken a final decision on whether its presidential candidate for the 2023 general election should be from the North or South because stakeholders are still strategising the best options that will guarantee victory for the party at the polls.
Wike said PDP is keen to take over power in 2023 and not in a hurry to give the ruling APC a glimpse of its strategy to win the next general election.
“I am from the southern part of Nigeria. I will be happy if power returns to the South, but if PDP will win the 2023 presidential election by zoning the presidential ticket to the North, I will not be opposed to it,” he said.
Wike also said he would not support the speculated presidential ambition of former President Goodluck Jonathan on the platform of the APC, declaring that it is not in his nature to engage in anti-party activity.
“If President Jonathan is given the APC presidential ticket, he knows that I will not support him. I will not engage in anti-party. Even if he is from the South, I will not endorse him. What is paramount is my party’s interest.
The governor however affirmed that if Jonathan secures PDP presidential ticket, Rivers State will overwhelmingly support him.
This was as he declared that nothing will make him defect from the PDP to the APC, which he described as a cancerous political party that is devoid of any solution to the prevailing security and economic challenges facing the Nigerian State.
According to Wike, the APC has ruined the Nigerian economy and only the PDP can pull it out of the brink of socio-economic collapse.
He said the decision concerning his political future would be taken by July 2022 when he must have completed all the projects started by his administration.
On the relationship with the Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Amaechi, Wike said God used him to enthrone the minister as governor of Rivers State in 2007.
“God used me to make Amaechi governor of Rivers State. There is even a video where he confessed during a church thanksgiving that, after God, I was the person that made him governor,” he said.
Wike said he has never personally accused his predecessor of corruption, instead a judicial commission of inquiry in the state had indicted the minister of misappropriation of the $308million realised from the sales of Rivers State assets.
He explained that the judicial commission also indicted the Amaechi’s administration for wasting N54 Billion on the abandoned 1.4 kilometre monorail project.
According to Wike, the minister had challenged his indictment in both Federal High Court and Court of Appeal and lost the two cases.
He said he has conscientiously made effort that developmental projects are equitably distributed in all the 23 local government areas of the state.
Furthermore, Wike said his administration, in its urban renewal drive, is gradually restoring Port Harcourt to his Garden City status.
