Former Chief of Staff, Rivers State Government House, Chukwuemeka Woke, on Thursday, hit out at the critics of his former boss and Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, saying their plot to pitch him against President Bola Tinubu is dead on arrival.
Woke accused the critics of abandoning the salient issues raised by Wike during his recent media chat to embark on fruitless blackmail aimed at causing disagreement between him and the President.
According to him, it has become obvious to the detractors that their diversionary tactics and their efforts to diminish the image of the minister have come to nought.
Woke, who spoke at a critical stakeholders’ meeting of Emohua local government area held at the council’s secretariat on Wednesday evening, said Wike’s detractors were desperate to pass through the backdoor to gain the favour of the President they never gave a chance at the last elections.
He however said their plot failed because the President knew their motives and antics and understood them as fair-weather politicians.
Woke said, “Our leader, Nyesom Wike, had in a recent media chat informed Nigerians on the activities of FCT administration and of course arising from a question asked by one of the panellists, he talked about politics in Rivers state.
“Rather than addressing those issues, what we see is name-calling, people trying to malign the person of the FCT Minister and trying to blackmail him to see whether they can cause any disagreement between him and the president, of course, they will not succeed.”
Woke disclosed that in 2021, the said politicians in their usual scheming approached Wike, who was then governor of the state, and urged him to run for the office of the President but later ganged up against him.
He added, “The same group of people, on the 13th of December 2021 went and woke up our leader from sleep by 1 am. Twenty-seven of them signed and asked him to come and run for President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria when our leader was already sleeping.
“Our leader asked them if they would stand behind him and they said yes. When it was time for the Presidential primaries all of them ganged up against him. They should leave name-calling, when the time for name-calling comes we will go into that.”
During his recent media chat in Abuja, Wike described those calling on the President to gag him, as fair-weather politicians, whose characters gravitated to persons with deep pockets.
The minister said he had defeated them and would continue to defeat them, even if they gathered under a failed political platform to destabilise and milk the system.