Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State’s ongoing effort to ingratiate himself with the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, is believed to be his final political battle to grab the ministerial slot belonging to the members of the All Progressives Congress in the state and remain politically relevant after his failed bids to clinch the presidential and vice presidential tickets of the Peoples Democratic Party, Ejiofor Alike reports
At the peak of his glory in September 2021 when he was bestriding the political landscape with boisterous confidence that he would fly the presidential ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general election, the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike had described the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as “cancer in stage four that can kill.”
Wike was responding to a call by the then Minister of Niger Delta, Senator Godwill Akpabio for him to dump the PDP for the APC.
The occasion was the inauguration of a new police headquarters in Rivers State where Vice President Yemi Osinbajo represented President Muhammadu Buhari. Reacting to the minister’s call, Wike said he preferred to live with malaria than with cancer.
“I prefer to stay where there is malaria than to go to where there is cancer. Cancer at the fourth stage, you are likely to die. So, I don’t want to die now,” Wike said.
Earlier while speaking in an interview with BBC Pidgin in March 2021, Wike had vowed never to follow the bandwagon and defect from the PDP to the APC.
