Umar Ganduje, the governor of Kano State, says Nyesom Wike, the governor of Rivers State, will be forced into isolation during the Edo State gubernatorial election.
Mr Ganduje stated this at the National Secretariat of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Abuja today after him and his committee members were inaugurated to lead the national campaign in the upcoming governorship election in Edo State.
A similar treatment, TODAY POLITICS recalled, was in 2013 meted out to Nasir El-rufai, the incumbent governor of Kaduna State, when he went to Anambra State to campaign against the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) which at the time had Willie Obiano, the incumbent state governor, seeking the state top job against now minister Chris Ngige.
The Kano helmsman heads a 49-member committee expected to work for the reclaiming of the state which the party recently lost to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) having disqualified the state governor, Godwin Obaseki, from using the APC platform for his re-election.
Mr Obaseki, who was disqualified over his academic credentials said to be deceptive is now the governorship candidate of the PDP.
Mr Wike, the governor of Rivers State, was appointed by the PDP to lead the party’s national campaign for the guber poll. He heads 99-member committee and he is expected to apply his political wealth of experience in ensuring the state does not revert back to the APC.
“The issue is that first of all, we know PDP made Governor Wike their chairman, I assure you, we will isolate Wike in an isolation centre and before he recovers, the election is over,” Ganduje said.
“The PDP decided to accommodate our former governor in Edo State not because they have anything in common, not because they share some feelings, but simply because he his managing the treasury of Edo State and they want him to use that treasury in order to win the election.
“But I assure you the people of Edo State are watching they know that somebody who was assisted in 2016 to win an election, somebody who was given every cooperation to succeed in governance of Edo State without doing much for the people, at the end of it, he is taken the treasury and now handed it over to PDP in order to win the election.
“The people of Edo State will not accept this treachery. The people of Edo State on September 19 will come out enmasse and vote APC,” he said.
The Kano governor also accused the PDP of plotting to rig the election but promised that his committee is well positioned to thwart the plan.
“We know the opposition is planning to rig the election, we know their tactics, we know there methodology and we shall dismantle all their tactics to ensure that we win this election,” Ganduje continued.
“First of all, seeing is believing, by looking at the composition of this Committee, you know that APC is ready for the election, you know that APC will do everything possible to win this important election.
“The reason why I am saying that, you know the composition of this Committee we have all war veteran in politics who are ready to do the job and we have young people who are just coming out from election and are ready to go back into the processes of election again. And we have all the horses who never missed their target.
“So, we assure you, the composition of this campaign council is strong and we are ready to do the job. The main purpose of this committee is to provide enabling environment for all our party men and even non party men, members of the public to appreciate our party based on their conscience and based on their ideological believe that APC is the answer in Edo State.
“So we are assure you we shall create enabling environment for a peaceful election,” he added.
