We’re talking with Wike – APC chieftain

A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Farouk Aliyu has said his party is in talks with Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State in a bid to get his support in next year’s general elections

Wike and his allies have had a running battle with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leadership since he lost the party’s presidential ticket to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

On Tuesday, the Rivers governor endorsed Govr Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State who is of the APC, a move that further deepened the PDP crisis.

And as far as APC chieftain Farouk Aliyu is concerned, the party will not hesitate to welcome Wike into its fold ahead of next year’s exercise.

“We are talking to Wike. We are talking to so many of them. Of course, it is politics. So, we are not enemies of Wike, and he is a very important person in this country – a governor for that matter – and you cannot ignore Rivers State,” he said on Channels Television’s Politics Today.

“So, if Wike decides to come to us, we would gladly welcome him, and I can confirm to you that we are talking to him.”

But a PDP chieftain Osita Chidoka has faulted Wike’s move, saying it is morally wrong.

“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 on the show.

Chidoka, 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.”