LAGOS — Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has chided Peter Obi, a former presidential aspirant on the platform of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), for chickening out of the party three days to the party’s presidential primary.
Obi, who was considered one of the top contenders for PDP’s presidential ticket, had on Wednesday announced his resignation from the party as well as withdrawal from its presidential primaries.
Speaking on Politics Today, a Channels TV political show on Thursday, Wike, who is also PDP presidential aspirant, said he was not surprised by the decision of the former governor.
“Peter Obi leaving the party is not surprising to me and I know he knows there’s no way he would have won the presidential primaries. Forget about what his campaign DG, Doyin Okupe, said about money,” Wike said.
“Those of us who joined this party since 1998 have never left the party. We believe in this party, it’s in our blood. It doesn’t matter what problems we may have in the party, we have to be inside it to settle the problems.”
Wike, who noted that Obi has not won any election since he left his former party, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in 2014, said the former governor lacked integrity and character.
“Since Peter Obi left APGA then as a governor, he has never won election. That is not even the issue. The issue is that there must be integrity, there must be character,” said the governor.
“How can a man who had gone to all the states to tell them how he had been a trader, how his family has been trading, how everybody should support him, how he wore one (pair of) shoe(s), how he did not allow anybody to carry his bag, and all those things, tender his resignation three days to the primary?
“What is he seeing differently that he did not see for many years, even as vice presidential candidate in the 2019 election, that he is now seeing just 72 hours to the (PDP presidential) primary?
“Someone can be the presidential candidate and still abandon their party and mess up. So, when we talk of character and integrity, it’s an issue. You can be the best economist, but without character, without integrity, it doesn’t mean anything.”
