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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 stated that instead of those, whom he described as failed politicians in the state 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 pitch 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 at a critical stakeholder meeting of Emohua Local Government Area of the state held 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.
Woke said: “Our leader, Nyesom 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 panellists he 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.”
Speaking further, 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, but reneged.
He, however, urged critics to focus on issues rather than resort to name calling and playing cheap politics.
Woke added: “We came in 2023, the same group of people, on the 13th of December, 2021, went and woke up our leader from sleep by 1 am. Twenty-seven of them signed and asked him to come and run for President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 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 primaries all of them ganged against him. Leave name calling, when the time for name calling comes, we will go into that.”
It would be recalled 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.
