Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State on Tuesday revealed how former president Goodluck Jonathan traveled to London, United Kingdom (UK) in 2015 to meet Atiku Abubakar at Dorchester Hotel and unsuccessfully pleaded with the Adamawa-born politician to support his presidential bid.
POLITICS NIGERIA reports that Wike spoke during the commissioning of Akpabu-Itu-Umudiagha Road in Emohua Local Government Area (LGA).
“You know what I don’t like in people. We forget history. In 2015, when as a sitting president, Jonathan went to London, in Dorchester Hotel, he went to plead with this our [sic] presidential candidate today, Atiku Abubakar. He said ‘please my brother, come back to the party and support me’.
“You know the condition they gave to Jonathan? That he should relinquish his ticket, not to run as president of Nigeria. That was a sitting president and a presidential candidate of a ruling party. They gave him condition. Telling him to relinquish that ticket for him not to run.
“So when I see some people, running around, talking rubbish, they forget history.
“Today, we are not saying the presidential candidate should relinquish the ticket. We are not being selfish, we are saying since you are now the presidential candidate, let our people take chairmanship, they say they will kill me. Is it possible?”
Governors Wike, Seyi Makinde (Oyo State), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), have been at daggers drawn with Atiku since the conclusion of the party’s presidential primaries in May over their insistence that Iyorchia Ayu steps down for a member of the party from the southern part of the country.
Efforts made by the Atiku camp to make the aggrieved governors have a change of mind have yielded no result as they have consistently boycotted Atiku’s campaign rallies.
