...Says Obi’s Threats Only Exist on Social Media
The Federal Capital Territory ( FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike on Wednesday said that his Rainbow Coalition has a strategy to deliver electoral victory to President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 general elections, and that no political ranting would make him disclose it.
This was even as he dismissed the threats posed to southern votes by Peter Obi, the Presidential Candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress ( NDC), saying that it only exists on social media.
Wike, who made this disclosure in Abuja after inspecting some road projects, also noted that allowing Peter Obi during the 2023 Presidential election to win more votes in Southern Nigeria was a strategy to deplete Atiku Abubakar’s electoral chances.
He reiterated that the ongoing attacks coming from the APC governors and other politicians against his Rainbow Coalition were to make them reveal their plans for President Tinubu’s victory.
The Minister stated that the winning strategy would never be disclosed before the elections, and that neither Peter Obi nor Atiku Abubakar would win the election in Rivers State.
According to him, the G5 governors understood the political game and its calculation, knowing that their South-South was overly a PDP region and so didn’t want Atiku, who was the PDP candidate, to win.
He said, ” We have our strategy in this election, and whether you like it or not, it’s not for us to let the cat out of the bag. Why we said what we said is to tell you that every election has a strategy. The G5 had their strategy.
” South-South was purely a PDP state, purely a PDP state, and so if we had voted for PDP all through, then Atiku would have won, and that was the threat. Obi wasn’t the threat. Obi was merely a threat by social media or the South-East or the Igbo people; what is the percentage?.
” When you are strategising to win an election, you look at a lot of factors: Who is my threat? If this is my threat, this is a lesser threat, and I know what to do so as to make sure that the vote of my major threat does not increase.
” So, people should learn all this. It’s not about staying on the platform to say, “Oh, Obi was winning Rivers State.” No, we strategised. Since this strategy made sure that Obi wins there, but in Rivers State, there is a factor. And that factor has to do with: you cannot say where Rivers State will go”.
He further explained that despite the social media-attributed popularity of Peter Obi, his group saw Atiku Abubakar as a major factor and main opposition, and therefore worked hard to deny him victory.
He added, ” We felt that Atiku was more of a factor in that election than Obi. Our strategy was that, listen, you vote, make sure that you vote for Obi to win, in order to deny Atiku the votes.
” For example, the South-South, actually, was what you would call the PDP state. Being PDP states, it means that if you look at the difference between what the President had and what Atiku had, the difference was about 2 million. Now look at the votes from the South-South, where PDP didn’t make the main route; that was what led to the loss.
