There’s no Reconciliation with Sheriff
Governor Nyesom Wike is one of the last men standing in the Peoples Democratic Party. Not a man that will retreat in the heat of attacks, he is firing on all cylinders. He described the loss by Makarfi at the Court of Appeal to Alli Modu Sheriff, whom he
Wway forward?
As far as I am concerned, you may say it is complicated but I will rather say it is a temporary setback because I don’t like commenting on all these judgments but I know that this is not the final bus stop; the final bus stop is the Supreme Court. Obviously, we reject the judgment. Sheriff is a mole in the party and so if it were a situation you know it is someone who has the interest of the party talking, then you begin to see how you can move from there. Having identified that the mole has been working for APC, it will be difficult for any right-thinking politician to say oh, let us allow him, it will be very, very difficult. We are going on appeal; we will take a major decision after the final appellate court that is, the Supreme Court has given its verdict, so I am not worried. I know that in politics this is the way it goes, you don’t expect things to be smooth all the time. Sometimes it is rough; it will threaten you and sometimes it enables you to know that this is the type of human beings you are working with so you can know the kind of characters they are made of. Luckily, it was not a unanimous judgment, it was a split decision of two to one; you can appreciate the fact that there is still hope as we go to the Supreme Court
Is Sheriff making moves to reconcile with the stakeholders?
There is nothing to reconcile because everybody has seen his actions so you don’t need anybody to tell you that he is a mole; even those who are parading him, you can see the characters, you can see how they romance with the ruling party. He is not going to work for the party; rather he wants to see that the party is decimated before 2019. There are so many people who see this as a business, I can say with authority that those people around him are people with questionable characters and it is difficult even to believe until they come around you and you see the stuff they are made of. So the issue of reconciliation does not arise since he is not quarrelling with anybody, all we are saying is that we cannot allow a wolf to be the chairman of our party.
There have been alleged threats after the appeal court judgment that they will push you out of the party, why that?
That also tells you he is just talking; he is not the one speaking. He is saying what people told him to say and they believe that if the threat is issued, it could amount to anything. He does not have what it takes to push me out of the party. Anyway, that is unthinkable but that tells you his mindset. If he pushes me out of the party and a state like Rivers is not in PDP what happens? So that tells you where the man is coming from.
accusations especially the issue of trying to compromise INEC officials. Can you tell us what happened because the police seem to believe that they have evidence that you tried to compromise INEC officials?
Ordinarily, I would not have reacted to this but because you have asked; we are already in court, I took the IG to court. Before now, I had said severally that the security agencies particularly the police had a predetermined mind on how to rig the election and throughout my political career, I have not seen where instead of members of the party directly rigging, you see security agencies directly rigging by themselves. So it is not a question of aiding, and of course, do you expect the police to say that they came to rig elections? It is very unfortunate. It was even on television how the police were brutalising electoral officers. They denied that they were the Nigerian Police, it tells you where we are heading to, so the issue of whether INEC said I compromised or not is laughable. I can tell you how they plotted everything but since they said they have evidence, let them take it to court and show the people how the money was kept in one place, who said he came to me and I gave them the money. All I can say is that their so-called report is laughable and at the end of the day, we shall meet in court. We are not afraid, that is why we say we should allow the institutions to work.
When we were preparing for that election, we did not know that we were not only contesting with another political party, we were also running against the police.
I am not a man anybody can cow or intimidate to talk good about the government when you know there is nothing good that comes out of the government, I am not going to do that. That the DSS and the Police are trying to portray me to the public as if there is nothing good that comes from me is unfortunate. Let them compare developments in APC states with what I am doing in my state and see whether the difference is not clear. I have refused to be distracted. I remain focused, not bothered about those laughable allegations by the DSS. Don’t you see when people demonstrate in their favour in Abuja, they don’t say anything but when somebody demonstrates against them they say oh, they are trying to cause a crisis. So these are the types of fake things you see them come up with; I don’t have sleepless nights about their so-called trumped up charges.
The Vice President was recently in your state and appeared to have been impressed and even called you Mr. Projects; coming from. How does that make you feel?
I was not surprised, when you see an experienced intellectual, exposed and at that level, what did you expect? There are people that do not play politics with everything. With all sincerity, that was my first time of being close to the vice president and he gave us a good impression that this is the type of person Nigerians should talk about. He saw the reality, he saw what