Follow Us on Google
From Tony John, Port Harcourt
Former chief of staff to Rivers State governor, Chukwuemeka Woke, has slammed those criticising his boss, now the Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, over political statements he (Wike) made during a recent media chat about the political situation in the state.
Woke said instead of those he described as failed politicians to address the salient issues raised by the minister about their characters, they rather were diverting attention.
He said Wike’s critics have failed in their antics of blackmail and fruitless ploy to pit him against President Bola Tinubu, stressing that their ill-fated attempt to diminish the image of the FCT minister has been noticed and will continue to fail.
Woke spoke during a stakeholders’ meeting of Emohua Local Government Area of the state at the council secretariat on Wednesday.
He said their (detractors’) desperate plot to pass through the back doors into the Tinubu’s administration had already failed, adding that the president is already aware of them and their antics.
“Our leader, Wike, had, in a recent media chat where he informed Nigerians on the activities of FCT administration and of course arising from a question asked by one of the panelists, talked about politics in Rivers State.
“Rather than addressing those issues, what we are seeing is name calling, people trying to malign the person of the FCT minister and trying to blackmail him to see whether they can cause any disagreement between him and the president. Of course, they will not succeed.”
Woke revealed that the said politicians in their usual scheming had in December 2021, approached the then governor of the state, Wike, persuading him to run for the office of the president.
He, however, urged critics to focus on issues rather than resort to name calling and playing cheap politics.
“The same group of people, on December 13, 2021, went and woke up our leader from sleep by 1am. Twenty-seven of them signed and asked him to come and run for president when our leader was already sleeping. Our leader asked them if they would stand behind him and they said yes. When it was time for the presidential primary all of them ganged against him. Leave name calling, when time for name calling comes, we will go into that.”
The FCT minister, during a media chat in Abuja recently, had described those calling on the president to gauge him, as fair weather politicians whose characters show as those with deep pockets.
The minister said he had defeated and continued defeating them even if they gathered under a failed political platform to destabilise and milk the system.
