The quest by Ebonyi State Governor, Dave Umahi, to be the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress in 2023 led to his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, has claimed.
Wike said committed members of the PDP were not surprised that Governor Umahi formally defected to the APC, which he has for a while been fraternising with.
Governor Wike said ordinarily, he would not have been perturbed by Umahi’s decision to defect to the APC, but, he felt offended by his attempt to justify his decision on the purported injustice meted out to the South East by the PDP.
The Rivers State governor accused Umahi of being unfair to the PDP, which gave him the governorship ticket in 2015 against all odds, and repeated same feat in 2019.
Governor Wike, who demanded that Umahi should retract the statement that the PDP has not been fair to the South-East, argued that under the PDP, the South East has produced Senate Presidents; National Vice Chairman of the PDP and Secretary to the Federal Government.
According to the Rivers Governor, “My friend, Umahi wants to be president. There is no problem about that. You have a right to be president. Nobody can stop you. You are educated. You have been a governor for two terms, so you are qualified to say I want to be president of Nigeria.
“But, that does not mean, that because you want to blackmail your party, and tell lies to the people you are leaving the party because of the injustice meted against the South-East, that is not correct.
“In life , power is sweet, but conscience is important. It is most offensive and insulting for a man to lie against his party because of power.
“My reaction to Governor Umahi’s defection is not that he has no right to defect, but to say he is defecting because of injustice meted to the South East that is insulting to the South East.”