Ogbonna Nwuke, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has urged Governor Nyesom Wike to ignore the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, over the current crisis in the party.
Recall that the governor had in a statement by his special adviser on media, Kevin Ebiri, said that he would reveal to Nigerians all that has transpired in the PDP since the emergence of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the party’s presidential flagbearer.
The former Rivers Commissioner for Information while reacting to Atiku’s interview with ARISE Television, said the utterances of the former Vice President portrayed him as an arrogant and undemocratic fellow.
In a statement in Port Harcourt at the weekend, Nwuke said it was surprising that Atiku tried to criticize the Muslim-Muslim ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) but turned blind eyes to his own fault of grabbing a presidential ticket that belonged to the South.
He said: “He (Atiku) has become arrogant. You can see what he said in contradiction of the PDP Constitution that talks about power rotation. He said power is negotiated and not transfered. In other words, those forces in the north that threw him up have no respect for written conventions. It is evidence of his arrogance.
“He talks about Muslim-Muslim ticket. He can see the fault in APC choice but he cannot see the fault in his decision after he failed woefully in 2018 to come back again and take the ticket that is meant for the south.
“We have gone passed exchanging words with a man who is behaving like a conqueror. He doesn’t understand that politics is about trust and about building bridges, cooperation and collaboration. We will see where that takes him.
“I am glad that the Rivers State Governor had said he would respond to him. But for me, the governor shouldn’t even waste his time talking to someone, who had lost touch with reality. The world knows that what happened was strictly uncharitable. Trying to sound off on a TV programme doesn’t make sense.
“He said he wanted reconciliation but while people are waiting for some reasonable talks, he is busy compounding the issues by the way he is talking. Pride goes before a fall”.
On Atiku’s claim that he chose someone, who could succeed him as his running mate, Nwuke said the presidential candidate failed to acknowledge the dynamics in politics.
According to him, “The truth is that he (Atiku) had not spoken like a democrat. In the dynamics of politics, there are things you don’t wish. There are things you don’t control. When he talks about one who would take over from him, he doesn’t seem to understand that circumstances determine the game of politics.
“It is the people that decide who will succeed who. Atiku is rather compounding the crisis in the PDP. This is not the language of a unifier and the language of one who believes in one Nigeria.
“It is regrettable that somebody whose membership of this country is based on boundary adjustment that moved his people from Cameroon to this country is sounding like one of those, who owned Nigeria. It is a pity”.
