Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state has hit out at former Senator Dino Melaye and condemned his decision to join the 2023 Kogi state gubernatorial race.
He submitted that Dino, a former member of the House of Representatives and the Nigerian Senate, lacks the needed qualities required in a governor.
Pulsenews gathered that Governor Wike , who said this while talking to journalists in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, added that voters in Kogi state will not consider Dino’s candidacy as one that they can support.
‘Why would Kogi people say they would vote for a candidate like Dino? Are we joking?
When you give Dino the party nomination, you know he won’t win in Kogi state’ he said.
Wike added that the fact that a person is an indigene of a state does not imply that he or she can stand as a candidate for an election and secure victory.
‘Dino does not have what it takes to be a governor for crying out loud.
He knows me very well. He does not have what it takes to be a governor’ he said.
The governor also warned that if the former senator is allowed to get the PDP guber nomination , the party will record an election loss.
‘Does it mean now that if the PDP wants to win the election, it would give the guber nomination to Dino and you say tomorrow that you were rigged when you have already killed yourself.
Are we saying that we want to win an election or just have a candidate? he asked.
Wike also disclosed that he would not campaign for the PDP if Melaye is produced as the party’s candidate.
‘Do you need to ask me that kind of question? Are you not aware that I would not do that? Wike submitted when asked if he would campaign for Melaye while accusing the PDP leadership of trying to ‘manipulate’ the process in favour of the former senator.
‘Why are you trying to manipulate this in favour of one aspirant? he queried.
Reacting to the comments made by Wike about his gubernatorial bid, former senator Dino Melaye has described Governor Wike as a person known for talking out of both sides of his mouth having supported his gubernatorial bid four years ago.
He also submitted that Wike supporting him cannot be considered important cognizant that he had opposed Governor Ademola Adeleke in Osun state, but he eventually got the party nomination and also won the governorship election.
‘I will want Nigerians to know that Wike was my biggest supporter when I ran for governorship in 2019, financially, and even otherwise.
Apart from funding me to the tune of hundred of dollars in the last governorship election in 2019, he provided his private jet to drop me in Kogi on the day of the primary, that is to show you the level, magnitude and intensity of his support and belief in me.
So the man who saw competence and capacity in me, and invested in that project, today in 2023, is saying that I am not qualified; the only explanation to that is psychotic disorderliness. The only explanation to that is mental fatigue. Because I am not a bootlicker, because I refused to walk in alliance with your myopic agenda, because I have refused to corroborate your intellectual stagnancy. I am more qualified to be governor. To the glory of God, I have nine university degrees, I have been a member of the House of Reps, I have been elected twice to the Senate, I have served as a presidential aide so I don’t know who is more qualified to be governor between me and Wike’ he said.
The PDP guber candidate also added that he entered the bad books of Governor Wike because he didn’t support him ahead of the 2023 PDP Presidential primary election.
‘Knowing his avowed credential to be eminently unworthy of the nomination, I had deployed support for Atiku Abubakar, a cosmopolitan and cultured statesman who ignored all the tantrums of Wike throughout the period of the election.
If Wike were a reflective mind he should now be more concerned about his post-tenure survival, because with the recklessness he exhibited in mismanaging the resources of Rivers State, his prison uniform must have been sewn and his inmate number must be waiting for his allocation’ he said
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