FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has openly asked members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja to work for President Bola Tinubu‘s re-election, and the party’s interim national leadership has told them not to.
“All the PDP FCT will support” Tinubu
At a stakeholders’ forum in Abuja this week, Wike, who coordinates the Tinubu/APC Presidential Campaign Council in the FCT, said: “I know all the PDP FCT will support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.” He said he had been tasked with delivering both Rivers State and the FCT to the president, urged residents to collect their Permanent Voter Cards, and promised: “All the logistics for our campaign, you will have it.”
Wike asked supporters to back Senator Philip Aduda and Dr John Gabaya, said FCT residents would be included in coming appointments, and listed projects to be commissioned before the election, including the Apo–Karshi road in November and at least six projects in the Abuja Municipal Area Council in December. He also defended the removal of the fuel subsidy: “Every president said it was a scam. But nobody had that courage to say it will go.”
The PDP’s answer
The PDP faction led by the Interim National Working Committee, through its national publicity secretary Ini Ememobong, rejected the appeal. It said the message was aimed at “pretenders” in the opposition working for the ruling party rather than real PDP members, that the opposition’s job is to offer an alternative, and that any alliance should be among opposition parties only. It told members to hold firm while the Court of Appeal decides the dispute over who controls the party.
The bigger picture
Wike’s open support for Tinubu while remaining a PDP figure has become one more source of division in a party already fighting in court over its leadership. In Rivers, he has also brought Governor Siminalayi Fubara back into his camp behind the APC governorship candidate, Kingsley Chinda.
