Ime Akpan
The governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike, has accused the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Dr Iyorchia Ayu of corruption saying he (Ayu) collected N1 billion for the party’s presidential primary and appropriated it.
Wike stated this in a television interview with some journalists in Port Harcourt on yesterday.
Wike, who wants Ayu to resign his chairmanship position since the presidential candidate of the party, Mr. Atiku Abubakar, like Ayu, is from the north said the money was given to him in Lagos.
He said Ayu met one of the presidential aspirants and complained that he was not sure the PDP governors would sponsor the presidential primary
“I’m totally informed. Ayu has the opportunity to challenge me, I will reveal more.
“Some of the governors can tell you. Will he deny the fact that he collected N1bn from Lagos? Let him deny it; I will tell him who gave him the money not from the Lagos State Government. The money was given to him in Lagos.
“He met one of the presidential candidates (aspirants) and told him that he’s not sure these governors may want to sponsor the party.
“That money did not enter into the account of the PDP, but we are not attacking Ayu on that basis,” he said
Wike also alleged that Ayu influenced the primary t ensure Atiku’s emergence.
“We have jettisoned our constitution knowing that we are laying a foundation, a seed of discord in future. But before the primary, Ayu emerged as the chairman. I stand to challenge anybody. Ayu kept thanking me and promising to unite the party. They started selling forms and people bought forms and said there was no need to zone. I saw fraud and manipulation.
“But some of us came out to say we wanted to run. The only thing I can tell you today is I feel pained that I don’t have the opportunity to fight bandits and oil theft (if I had been elected as president). The two things I told myself I was going to do was to take on insecurity head-on and the issue of oil theft affecting our economy today. But it is God that gives power.
“We campaigned seriously. They were shocked at the modus of our campaign. There were meetings upon meetings. A whole national chairman threatened some of the presidential candidates at that time that if Wike won he was going to resign.
“In fact, he was calling aspirants to withdraw for Atiku Abubakar. Bala Mohammed is there. Saraki is there. Tambuwal is there. Meetings were called. ‘You must withdraw if not we will lose, Wike will win.’
“This is the national chairman of a party who is supposed to be the chief umpire. Even at the primary, that was why we started the primary very late. Meetings were going on, asking people to step down. Some top retired generals were involved. Some of the meetings were held in their houses.
“But even in the committee for the convention, when we met in Benue Governor’s Lodge with the national working committee, I told the National Chairman that the people he was fronting for as chairmen of the committees were all supporters of Atiku Abubakar. He said no.
“I told him we didn’t want the party to be in crisis and challenged him to do the right thing so that at the end of the day all of us would be happy. We are opposition party not the ruling party and we must conduct ourselves in such a way to avoid internal crisis.
“But there was nothing Ayu didn’t do: manipulation of delegates list. Unfortunately for them, the numbers were not adding up. There was nothing they didn’t do to ensure Wike did not emerge. We went to the convention.
“You remember I spoke last. When I came out to speak, there was danger. The ovation was thunderous. It became a problem for them. I was highly disappointed by the former Senate President (David Mark). It had never happened in the history of elections. In fact, when you are speaking, whatever thing you want to do, you say it at that point.
“When everybody had spoken for them to commence, a whole chairman of the national convention planning committee said there was an announcement. It had never happened anywhere. People were thinking it was for security reasons. But he gave the microphone back to Tambuwal to come again and speak after everybody had spoken to say he wanted to withdraw. He now went ahead to say people should vote for Atiku Abubakar.
“At that point, if not for the love of the party, that convention wouldn’t have held. There would have been crisis at that convention. But we decided to go ahead for peace to reign. We decided to avoid anything that would cause problem. I would have said the convention would not hold, and if heaven was going to come down, we would have allowed heaven to come down that day.
“After you had done all you had done, you now went to Tambuwal to say he was the hero of the convention. A national chairman? We thought it was over and there would be reconciliation.”
He said the failure of the PDP to abide by the agreement reached that the south should produce the president in 2023 is the reason he fell out with his Delta and Enugu State counterparts, Ifeanyi Okowa and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.
“We (governors) from the south met and said the presidency must go to the South. Governors Rotimi Akeredolu, Dave Umahi and Ifeanyi Okowa were the conveners.
“The first meeting was in Asaba and in that meeting, it was agreed that with President Muhammadu Buhari being a northerner and certain to do eight years, for the sake of inclusion, the next President should come from the South.
“The next meeting was in Lagos and we also agreed to pursue the agenda. The final meeting was in Enugu. I remember one of the governors said, ‘How can I tell my children that I cannot be President because I did not come from a particular section of the country?’ At the appropriate time, I will name the governor.
“That was why we said Secondus’ (Uche) time was running out and he was not going back. The presidency has to come to the South and the presidency cannot come to the South if you (Secondus) are the chairman of the party.
“I was surprised at the behaviour of some governors, who were even the conveners of the southern governors’ meeting. They started shifting grounds, insisting that the chairmanship should not be zoned.
“We set up a committee chaired by the governor of Enugu and Ortom was the deputy chairman. Because they thought they were too clever, they said they would zone only party offices and not elective offices, and we asked why. We said this would cause a crisis for the party.
“The chairmanship was zoned to the north and that’s why nobody from the south contested.”
Wike also alleged that Ayu had been tipped as secretary to the government of the federation in the event of Atiku.
“You see when we talked about Ayu, it seems people don’t know what is involved. Ayu wants to be in power so that he will be there and if we (the PDP) win (presidential election), he wants the secretary to the government of the Federation position. You know these positions have been shared and then they are talking to ‘small boys’ like us to play along like we don’t know what is going on.
“I can tell you that because most of you don’t know what is going on in the party. Somebody has been given the Senate President position. And do you think I will sit here on national television to tell you things I don’t know? It is just because of confidentiality and certain things that we cannot say them here,” he said.
Reacting to Wike’s claims, spokesman the Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign, Mr. Daniel Bwala, said the Rivers State governor was insisting on Ayu’s removal because of his intention to pick the party’s presidential ticket in 2027.
Bwala, who said this during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today, said if Wike succeeded with Ayu’s removal, the new chairman would pave the way for him to clinch the party’s ticket in 2027.
“What is it about, Iyorchia Ayu that he has to leave, because if we are going to pander to what we hear everyday even from the party, there is this wide believe that he (Wike) wants to run in 2027 for the presidency and for him to succeed in that, he has to put the chairman; but that he will have to then undermine the party’s progress because that will pave the way for a new order for the 2023 election that he wants to run. I never said that but those who said that have furnished facts to support it.”
He stressed that Wike was playing god on the party through his insistence that the party’s chairman must resign.
“Let me tell you why you can’t play god, Atiku left the party, it survived; Ayu left the party, it survived; if Wike leaves the party, it will survive. Obasanjo is not in the PDP, it survived. You need to understand and know the limits of your operations and influence.
“At every material time that the party took decisions, at least in the last few times that we know, they were decisions that were taken in the belief that Wike should have his way; that’s why I said it is not good to play god; it is not good to have quarrel with people,” he said.
