Ayu Rejects PDP NWC’s Proposal to Hold Private Audience with Wike

*Secondus kicks as Rivers gov boasts of removing him as PDP chairman

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

The efforts to reconcile aggrieved members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have suffered a setback as the National Chairman of the party, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, has rejected the proposal by the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) for him to hold a private audience with the Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Nyesom Wike.

Wike’s loyalists are insisting that one of the conditions to reconcile the Rivers State governor with the presidential candidate of the party, Atiku Abubakar, is for Ayu to vacate his seat for the southerner.

A meeting held on Friday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, between the reconciliation teams of Atiku and Wike ended in a deadlock.
Wike’s team, it was learnt, was said to have insisted that Ayu must resign as a condition precedent for further discussion.

The leader of the team led by a former governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, told Atiku’s team led by Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa State that they should inform the former vice president of this position before further deliberation between the two camps.
THISDAY gathered that the PDP NWC had advised Ayu to visit the Rivers State governor for them to resolve the dispute on a one-on-one basis but the former Senate President rejected the proposal.

Investigation revealed that the NWC in their meeting last Thursday told Ayu that they would accompany him to Port Harcourt if he was not willing to go alone.
According to one of the NWC members who spoke on condition of anonymity, the NWC members who feared that the crisis is becoming personal asked the national chairman to take the path of a leader to see Wike and resolve the crisis which is becoming intractable.

The source further stated that the NWC members volunteered to go with Ayu to meet with the Rivers State governor as a team.
He further stated that Ayu rejected the offer of going with them to see the Rivers State governor or engage him in a private audience.
According to him, Ayu ruled out any private meeting with Wike on the matter, insisting that he has four years to complete his tenure as the party’s national chairman.

It was learnt that the two camps that held the deadlocked meeting in Port Harcourt would use the weekend to brief their principals on the outcome of the meeting.
THISDAY gathered that the main issue on the side of Wike’s camp is to ensure that all the supporters of the Rivers State governor are carried along in the electioneering campaigns expected to kick off on September 29.

A source privy to the negotiations told THISDAY that, “we are waiting for a green light from the reconciliatory camps to enable the party to summon the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting to approve membership of the presidential campaign  council of the party.”

The source said that the PDP would not want to announce any member of the party that would not honour and participate in the campaigns.
Meanwhile, Wike and the former National Chairman of the party, Prince Uche Secondus yesterday engaged in a war of words over an alleged threat by the Rivers State governor to crush anyone who supports the enemies of the state.

A visibly angry Wike, who spoke at the flagging off ceremony of the construction of internal roads at Omagwa in Ikwerre Local Government Area of the state, vowed to “finish” anyone who pitches his tent with the “enemies of the state.”

According to the governor, “If anybody fights our system, we will fight the person back.
“Let me tell you what you don’t understand in politics. The moment you claim to be working with us and tomorrow you shift to our enemy, we will take every might we have; we will even leave our enemy and finish you first.

“So, all of you who are going back to Abuja to hold meetings with our enemies in the state, I am going to finish you to the last.
“We removed a national party chairman who was not doing well. All of them were here; we all agreed; now they are going to Abuja to hold meetings with the man we removed, thinking that you will use that to fight us; we will crush them.”

But in a swift response, Secondus told Wike that he is not God who could crush anyone.
In a statement by his media aide, Ike Abonyi, the former National Chairman of the main opposition party stated that his attention “has been drawn to the haughty and disdainful threat from Governor Nyesom Wike that he will crush anybody who works with him (Secondus) in support of the PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.

“The simple responses of Prince Secondus to the empty threat are: ‘Wike you cannot crush anybody, I cannot fight, only God can crush”
Secondus also drew the attention of Wike to the advice given by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who told public officers that ‘no condition is permanent,’ reminding the Rivers State governor that nobody can become the governor of a state or President of this country forever.