A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Osita Chidoka has challenged Governor Nyesom Wike’s endorsement of his Lagos State counterpart Babajide Sanwo-Olu, saying it is morally wrong.
The Rivers State governor, who is a member of the main opposition PDP, had on Tuesday endorsed Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress (APC). But while featuring on a Channels TV program, Chidoka, a member of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), said that while Wike is free to associate with anyone, the moral burden lies with the Rivers leader. He said the party’s leadership will have to review the governor’s actions. “Governor Wike has the liberty to do most of the things he’s doing because he has no skin in the game,” the former aviation minister said.
He, however, noted that “if he wants to support the presidential candidate of any party, he is free to do so but he has a moral responsibility not to be sitting on a PDP seat as a governor and be talking about another candidate. “That moral burden is more on Wike than it’s on PDP to justify why he is taking that position for a party that has been good to him from local government chairman to being the governor of a state.”
Wike has been at loggerheads with the party after losing the PDP presidential primary to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in May. While the Wike mandated the resignation of the party’s National Chairman Iyorchia Ayu, efforts to settle the conflict have thus far failed. And according to Chidoka, Wike’s perspective portends a risk for the next chairman of the PDP. “The discussion about whether the chairman of the party will leave has been a consistent conversation in PDP with Governor Wike,” he maintained. “He wanted Makarfi to leave, he wanted Secondus to be chairman, Secondus became, he wanted him to leave at some point. He brought Sheriff as chairman of the PDP, he wanted him to leave and he went all the way to the Supreme Court. “He brought Iyorchia Ayu as the chairman and now he wants him to leave. Even the next chairman is at risk if he continues to be the governor that at some point he may want the chairman to leave.”
