Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike on Monday, May 25, broke his silence on the political turbulence gripping Rivers State, mocking Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s withdrawal from the 2027 APC governorship race and throwing his full weight behind the emergence of House of Representatives member Kingsley Chinda as the party’s candidate.
Speaking with reporters during an inspection tour of major infrastructure projects across Abuja, the former Rivers State governor revealed that a secret political pact brokered by President Bola Tinubu had underpinned the entire drama, disclosing that Fubara agreed to abandon his second-term ambition in exchange for the dropping of impeachment threats against him by the Rivers State House of Assembly.
While Fubara’s eventual withdrawal satisfied the terms of that agreement, Wike was scathing about the governor’s decision to purchase the nomination forms in the first place, describing the move as a breach of political trust and an affront to the president’s repeated peace interventions.
“In the first place, he ought not to have collected the form because the agreement was reached that the impeachment should be dropped, while he should also not talk about a second tenure. By collecting the form first, he didn’t show signs of gentlemanship. He didn’t show that sign, and that was not expected. We thought that Mr President had been intervening severally and pleading with the legislature not to continue with impeachment,” he said.
The minister, however, expressed no surprise at the outcome, insisting that Chinda’s emergence was the natural result of his political stature.
“A good product markets itself. Everybody knows that Kingsley Chinda is the material. He’s quite experienced. He has worked with the executive and now in the legislature — you can hear his voice when he was a minority leader of the PDP. I’m sure that he must have been approached by the ruling All Progressives Congress to join them and then get the ticket,” Wike stated.