Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), has spoken on the crisis roiling Rivers State in the midst of the attempt to impeach the oil-rich state governor, Siminalayi Fubara.
At his office on Tuesday, Wike, the former governor of Rivers State, underscored the significance of retaining his base in order to sustain his political significance.
He insisted that a leader loses political significance the moment they lose their base. No amount of slander directed at him, Wike clarified, would cause him to lose sleep; the proper action must be taken.
“All of us want to be politically relevant; all of us want to maintain our political structure,” the minister said.
“Is it not your political structure? Will you allow anybody to just cut you out immediately? Everybody has a base. If you take my base, am I not politically irrelevant?”
The relationship between Wike and Fubara is said to have gone sour following the threat by the Assembly to impeach the governor.
Some have accused Wike of being the brain behind the impeachment plot. The Rivers Assembly Complex was turned into a confusion theatre after fire gutted a section on Sunday night
There was also some drama on Monday morning with the removal of principal officers in the Assembly as gunshots rent the air.
Fubara had stormed the Complex on Monday to see the level of the damage and alleged that he was shot at by the police, an allegation the police said was being probed.
Both Wike and Fubara are of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). But Wike noted that internal wranglings are common in politics and will be settled using the party’s mechanisms.
“In politics, there are a lot of internal wranglings,” he said.
“But to come out and say ‘Oh they want to do this against me, it will not work.’ I had every power then to say where this thing is going. So, when things are wrong, you ask questions. It is a party affair. The party knows how they resolve their own mechanism, it is not an ethnic affair.
“Our party is coming to it, that is what I will say. Every politician has his own interest,” the former governor added.