Amaechi, Wike’s camps in fresh exchanges

The Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, has asked the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, and his supporters to move to another political party to test his popularity, declaring that change has come to the Niger Delta state.

An ally of Amaechi, Emma Chinda, however, described Wike as a political jobber whose primary interest was how he could become the governor of the state in 2015.

Chinda, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Rivers Commissioner for Agriculture declared that the Minister of State for Education resisted moves by Amaechi to deliver Rivers State for President Goodluck Jonathan during the 2011 presidential election.

Wike equally described Amaechi, who is also the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), as disobedient to President Jonathan and the traditional institution in Rivers State.

Wike, the grand patron of the Grassroots Development Initiative (GDI), spoke through the Secretary-General of the GDI, Samuel Nwanosike, yesterday in an interactive session with reporters in Port Harcourt.

The Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt, Chief Tony Okocha, had earlier asked Wike to stop his 2015 governorship campaign and face the strike by the members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP).

The Chief of Staff also urged the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, to call Wike to order for violating the rule of campaigning 90 days to elections.

Nwanosike said: “In 2011, Barr. Wike was the Director-General of Amaechi Campaign Organisation and he used the platform to get President Jonathan and Amaechi elected.

“Amaechi and six Northern Governors, who are now friends, wanted Alhaji Atiku Abubakar as the presidential candidate of the PDP in 2011, but Chief Wike opted for Dr. Jonathan.

“Chief Wike wants change in Rivers State. He has come to liberate Rivers State from mismanagement and underdevelopment. The Minister of State for Education is not campaigning, but participating in the GDI’s thanksgiving and inauguration at the ward and LGA levels.

“Amaechi and his confused supporters should move to another political party now to test their popularity. The era of money politics has gone in Rivers State. You must now be popular to win elections.”

Chinda urged Rivers people not to take Wike seriously, but to continue to support the focused Amaechi’s administration in its transformational agenda.

The Rivers governor’s ally said: “Wike resisted moves by Governor Ameachi to deliver Rivers State for President Jonathan in the 2011 general elections when he was the Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt. The present posture of Wike is a deception to achieve his political ambition of becoming Rivers Governor in 2015.

“Wike is playing political gimmicks. He has just announced himself clearly as a political jobber.

“I still remember that in 2011, when we were doing the presidential campaigns, Wike was the person who headed a campaign against President Jonathan.

“If not for the intervention of Governor Amaechi, Dr. Jonathan would not have got many votes in Rivers State because Wike was bent on making sure that President Jonathan was not elected.

“I know that Wike does not care if President Jonathan loses the 2015 election or not. What he wants is to see how he can use Dr. Jonathan’s name to launch his own political programme in Rivers State. He should realise that Rivers people are more than that.

“We need to tell him that we have passed the era when we say: oh, this person is there, to an era when we now say: oh, road is there; health centres, schools, employment opportunities are there.”

Chinda challenged Wike to quickly bring an end to the ASUU strike which has been on for over three months and that of the ASUP, thereby stopping to heat up the polity in Rivers State.

He said: “Wike has got a plethora of problems to solve. Let him go back to his Federal Ministry of Education. He has a tall task of making sure that Nigerian universities and polytechnics reopen, of making sure that teachers do not go on strike.

“Wike is not ashamed as a supervising Minister of Education that policemen chased away with teargas at the Liberation Stadium, Port Harcourt, 13,000 newly-recruited teachers who had gone to collect their posting letters. Till date, he has not made any comment about it.

“What kind of minister is that? We should realise that this man is just clueless and what he is doing is political jobbing.”

Nwanosike later added: “In what capacity can Emma Chinda describe Wike as a political jobber when he (Wike) facilitated his (Chinda’s) appointment as a commissioner in Rivers State?

It would be recalled that the face-off between Amaechi and Wike (both Ikwerre) started with the governor declaring that it would not be ideal for another Ikwerre person to succeed him in 2015, while preferring another ethnic group or senatorial district, which did not go down well with Wike.