The Rivers State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has told the President elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu that they were not party to his visit to the state on Wednesday.
Tinubu is expected to be in Rivers State on a two-day visit to the state to commission a flyover and a court complex constructed by the Governor Wike’s administration.
Mr Wike had declared Wednesday as a public holiday, urging the people of the state to turn out en masse to receive his guest, the President-elect .
But in a statement on Tuesday, the spokesperson of APC in the state, Darlington Nwauju, described the visit as private which was on the invitation of Governor Wike.
He said that the visit has nothing to do with the APC in the state.
“We challenge the Governor being an outgoing governor (Mr Wike) to play less divisive politics and exercise restraint in planting seeds of discord amongst opposition political parties.
“We are aware that the governor has been working so hard to paint a false perception of the collapse of the APC structure in Rivers State even when he had in previous well-documented interviews vowed never to have anything to do with a “cancer party (APC),” Mr Nwauju said.
Wike, is a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He fell out with his party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and supported Mr Tinubu in the presidential election.
Ahead of the election, Tinubu during his presidential campaign rally in Rivers State visited Wike in Government House in Port Harcourt, where the governor said that APC candidates in the state would not win the Governorship election in Rivers State. He had advised Tinubu not to invest in the APC candidates in Rivers State.
The APC spokesperson in the state said it was aware of “Governor Wike’s plot to prank our President-elect into believing his false narrative that there is no other opposition political party existing in Rivers State,” adding that “Rivers people already know this is not the correct situation on the ground.”
Rivers APC, Mr Nwauju, said is “focused on pursuing justice by challenging the outcome of the flawed 18 myth March elections at the Elections Petitions Tribunal and cannot be distracted by the antics of Gov. Wike and his co-travellers.”
