*canvasses 50% votes from Adamawa delegates
*State party chairman dashes his hope
By; TINA PHINEAS, Yola
As politicians start lobbying for votes from delegates in preparation for party primaries leading to 2023 general elections, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and a presidential hopeful of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has said that he is the only aspirant that can redeem the PDP by taking over power from the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Addressing delegates, the Rivers State Governor said he has been to many states on his campaign so far, stressing that his name is reigning in all visited.
“Everywhere you go now, it’s Wike, Wike, and Wike,” he said.
“The APC sees me as their problem, but the people appreciate my developmental efforts and call me Mr Projects. Make me the PDP presidential candidate. Let me go and defeat this APC who see me as their problem,” he stressed.
Wike who made this assertion in Yola, the home state of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and frontline PDP presidential aspirant, urged Adamawa delegates to give him 50% of their votes and give Atiku the remaining 50% when the party’s presidential primary comes up.
“I am in Adamawa State to canvass for your votes. Give me 50 per cent of your votes and give 50 per cent to Atiku,” Wike said.
Expressing the view that the PDP has 2023 as the last chance to redeem itself by taking the presidential power back from the APC, Wike asserted that he is the only aspirant of the PDP who could achieve it for the party.
In his remarks, the Adamawa State Chairman of the PDP, Barrister Ahmed Tahir Shehu, told Wike that he will not have Adamawa delegates’ votes.
Shehu said the delegates are for son-of-the-soil Atiku and the votes would go to him.
Wike was accompanied to Adamawa State by PDP top shots from across the country, including immediate past Gombe State Governor, Ibrahim Dakwambo, who said Wike was in Adamawa State so that the delegates could see him, hear him, gauge him and be in position to make up their minds about him.
New Nigerian reports that although Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State was in town and received Wike behind closed doors at the Government House, Yola, he was not at the reception held for Wike at the Banquet Hall.
