Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said he is “not afraid to fight” Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State because he had in the past fought a sitting president (Olusegun Obasanjo).

According to Politics  Nigeria’s report,  Atiku’s comments were echoed by Senator Dino Melaye, the Spokesperson of the PDP Presidential Campaign Management Committee. This newspaper reports that Atiku quarreled with his boss, Obasanjo when he served as Nigeria’s vice president between 1999 and 2007. Wike and four other governors of the party — Samuel Ortom (Benue), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) — have boycotted Atiku’s presidential campaign rallies on account of inequity in the PDP.

The crisis led to the cancellation of the PDP presidential rally in Rivers State last week.

Melaye while speaking at a meeting with Atiku’s Rivers supporters in Abuja on Sunday night said, “When we saw the satanic manifestations going on in Rivers, some of us very hot heads, had a meeting with the Chairman of the party, and the presidential candidate and his vice, and we said ‘we must go to Rivers’. Our blood boiling. “Ningi (Abdul Ahmed) said we must go, Ndudi Elumelu says we must go, Philips Aduda said ‘we must go’. But Atiku Abubakar, a father, a unifier, a pacifier, a sanctification [sic], he said ‘Dino’, I said ‘sir’, ‘you know I am not afraid to go to Rivers’, I said I know sir. He said if I fought a sitting president, it is not anything to fighting a sitting governor.

“He said, never on my account, never on the account of my ambition will one drop of blood be spilled in Rivers State. And that matter concludes that we are left blood for blood-sucking demons, we have left blood for vampires, we are going to win Rivers without spilling blood.”