The governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, claimed on Thursday that Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate for their party, had been thwarted by Rotimi Amaechi, Tonye Cole, and his predecessor as governor.
In a state broadcast, Wike said that Rotimi Amaechi and his protege Tonye Cole aggressively resisted the call for a power shift to the South and worked against their party’s presidential candidate in Rivers State.
Tonye Cole immediately congratulated the winner on his Instagram account but then took the image down in response to backlash.
Tinubu defeated APC heavyweights like Amaechi, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, and Senate President Ahmed Lawan in June 2022 to secure the party’s nomination.
In addition, Wike charged that his predecessor “failed for eight years as Governor of Rivers State” and “could not attract any single development project to Rivers State for seven years” as the minister of transportation.
Prior to Saturday’s gubernatorial and state assembly elections, he said that Amaechi and the APC had planned to invade and interfere with the voting process in Rivers, noting that the security services had been informed.
In order to allow all employees from the private and public sectors to come to their villages and cast their votes in their local voting locations, the governor also proclaimed Friday, March 17, 2023, a public holiday.
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The “G5 Vindicated”
Wike, a member of the G5 or Integrity Group within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), claimed that Voters had validated his caucus by electing Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, as president-elect instead of Atiku Abubakar, who is from the north-eastern state of Adamawa.
“The presidential election was about fairness, equity, and justice for us in the G-5. We pledged to work toward the transfer of the presidency from Northern Nigeria, where it has been for the past eight years, to Southern Nigeria.
Luckily, Nigerians have supported our position, and we are grateful for the electoral majority’s decision to reinforce the country’s unity, according to Wike.
As of the date of publication, the former minister has not reacted to the accusations.
Long War Between G5 and Atiku and Ayu
In the months leading up to the February 25 presidential election, Wike, who lost the PDP primary to Atiku last May, was outspoken about his opposition to the former Vice President’s bid for the presidency in 2023.
After the eight-year term of the current Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, who is from Katsina State in the North-West geopolitical zone, four other member-governors of the G5 supported a power shift to the south.
Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), and Nyesom Wike are the five PDP governors who make up the G5 (Rivers).
After the party’s presidential primary in May 2022, the five governors united to demand that Iyorchia Ayu, the PDP National Chairman, step down in favor of a southern replacement as a condition of their support for Atiku in the February 25 election. In the just completed elections, Atiku and Ayu both called the governors’ bluff and refused to give in to their demands.
Atiku finished last in all G5 states for the presidential election, whereas Peter Obi of the Labour Party won Enugu and Abia, and Bola Tinubu fared well in Oyo, Benue, and Rivers.
To win the most votes (8,794,726), over two million more than his nearest challenger, Atiku, 70-year-old Tinubu won in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states and scored major results in several more.
Atiku, 76, who has now campaigned for president six times, received 6,984,520 votes, while Obi, who finished the race with 6,101,533, garnered youthful voters in a way that some have called unprecedented in less than a year.
