Wike: I’m Not Taking Sides with Israel against Palestine

•No harm must befall FCT minister, Nabena warns Gumi

•Sheikh’s outburst irresponsible, absurd, says PANDEF

Adedayo Akinwale, Olawale Ajimotokan and Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, yesterday, said his recent meeting with the Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria was not to offer any support to Israel against Palestine in the ongoing conflicts between the two sides.

But a former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Yekini Nabena, has warned Sheikh Ahmad Gumi that no harm must befall Wike, following his recent outburst against the minister.

This was as the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), has also described recent comments by Gumi against Wike as “irresponsible, absurd and subversive.”

Wike had at a meeting with the Israeli Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Michael Freeman, on October 3, expressed the willingness of his administration to partner the State of Israel on agriculture, information technology and the security of the nation’s capital.

However, the meeting was before the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed more 1,400 people and almost 200 taken as hostages and the series of retaliatory onslaughts and bombings unleashed on Gaza by the IDF, which hadleft more than 4,000 Palestinians dead and almost one million people displaced.

But Wike at a recent meeting with the leadership of the Abuja National Mosque Management Board denied having the constitutional powers to determine Nigeria’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

He insisted such powers were confined with the President and Commander-in-Chief, adding that, he also heard on social media platforms about having a covert meeting with Israel.

“I am here acting on delegation of powers on behalf of Mr. President. I cannot determine a relationship between a country and another country. So, it is difficult for anybody to say I am doing this, I am doing that. 

“Any foreign body that wants to have anything to do with Nigeria, it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who will write to me and state that these people want to see me; it is simple.

“And when they come, it is in my position to say look, we want to partner you. Take for instance, you are going into agriculture and we want to partner, then we’ll tell you where exactly,” Wike said.

He insisted that his meeting with the Israeli Ambassador was purely to promote agricultural partnership in the interest of the farmers in the FCT.

The minister said: “In Abuja, here, most of them have cultural farms and we say look, it is our own desire to help anybody who wants to invest in Abuja particularly in agriculture in order to employ our people and in order to get more revenue. It has nothing to do with another country.

“When our people begin to now think different angles and people may not understand that it is not correct. So, I will like to use this opportunity to say, look, we have to talk to our people. In fact, we must live harmoniously. We must live together to make sure that development is promoted.”

Also, in a statement issued yesterday, Nabena,  noted that Gumi and others like him would be held responsible by the Niger Delta people if anything happened to Wike.

“My intervention in the recent controversial statement is not about the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike alone, it is about the rights of the Niger Delta people and the Southerners in general.

“At this stage, we expect all the voices of reasoning to speak out because the sense of entitlement of the likes of Sheik Gumi is becoming more satanic,” he said.

The APC chieftain condemned what he called sense of entitlement by some ‘ethnic and religious bigots’ in the Northern part of Nigeria.

Nabena stressed that some Northerners’ sense of entitlement was not only dividing the nation, but also making them see Southerners as inferior to them in a country where everyone is supposed to have equal rights.

On their part, the National Publicity Secretary of PANDEF, Dr. Ken Robinson, in a statement, said it was most unfortunate that at a time when every well-meaning Nigerian should be concerned about the stability, peace, and unity of the country, the likes of Gumi were stoking the embers of discord intended to exacerbate tension in the country.

He maintained that it was utterly despicable that a so-called cleric would fashion himself into a shameless promoter of parochialism and acrimony.

“We consider the call for the removal of Chief Nyesom Wike as Minister of FCT, and indeed, any other Niger Deltans, based on wild predispositions, as an indirect poke at the people of the Niger Delta region, and the South-South Geopolitical Zone, in particular, to catechize our stake in the Nigerian State.

“Perhaps, it is necessary to underscore some unadorned facts Sheikh Gumi is pretending to overlook. Abuja is the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria and not a sectional capital, more so, it (FCT) was developed and continues to be developed with, mainly, the oil and gas resources of the Niger Delta region, where Nyesom Wike comes from.”