PDP crisis: My fight with Ayu, others just started

Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State has said his fight with the National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Iyorchia Ayu, and his cohorts, has just started.

Wike stated this on Monday during the inauguration of the re-modeled Community Secondary School in Okoro-nu-Odo in the Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of the State.

The governor stated that Ayu, who failed to deliver his political unit, ward, local government, or state to the PDP during the last just-concluded general elections, cannot preside over the party.

Wike asserted that the suspension of Ayu was the beginning of the fight to save the party, adding that some persons within the party are supporting and encouraging Ayu to resist his suspension.

He, however, warned that such persons leading the PDP chairman to his destruction would be doing so to their detriment.

He said, “Ask them, those who want to be chairman of this party; what do you have to give to the party now?

“Those of you who are fighting that they have suspended him, you have not seen anything yet. The fight has started. Ayu, the fight has just started. If you know him, those of you who are close to him, tell him, Iyorchia Ayu, the fight has just started.”

The governor said it was God who hardened Ayu’s heart not to vacate office when the G-5 governors and other party leaders demanded his resignation after the emergence of Atiku Abubakar as the PDP presidential candidate.

Wike said if Ayu had resigned then, his loyalists who opposed the zoning of elective and appointive offices, would have used that as an excuse for the party’s abysmal performance in the recent elections.

He insisted that other PDP-controlled states cannot sustain the party financially and tolerate the embattled chairman as their leader, noting that Ayu failed to strengthen the party in his home state of Benue.

He said: “Will you preside over the one (Rivers PDP) I have secured victory for? Do you want to come and preside over this state (Rivers) so that we will begin to donate money to the party?

“You, bring your state to the party too so that your state (Benue) can contribute money to the national (level). If you don’t deliver your state, you can’t preside over us. You cannot.”