By Omeiza Ajayi
Federal Capital Territory FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, has declared that the Rainbow Coalition backing President Bola Tinubu’s re-election has come to stay, saying there is “nothing anybody can do about it”.
Asked whether the arrangement had silenced his critics, who are mainly All Progressives Congress APC governors, he said: “I don’t know where you are getting all this from. Problem that does not exist. I don’t know what concerns there are. As far as I am concerned, there is no problem.”
Speaking during his monthly media chat in Abuja on Tuesday, Wike dismissed suggestions that the coalition had unsettled APC governors or could encourage defections from the ruling party.
He then challenged anyone unhappy with the arrangement to take the matter up with him directly.
“If you have any problem against me, come out and face Wike. Don’t go under the Rainbow Coalition. For Rainbow Coalition, it has come. It will stay. There is nothing anybody can do about it,” he said.
Wike, who coordinates the coalition’s activities in Rivers State and the FCT, said the initiative puts APC members and Tinubu’s supporters in other parties on one platform.
“If you see that word, PBAT/APC, it means those who are supporting the president who are not members of the party, together with the party, are working together to achieve that purpose,” he said.
He cited the Governor of Anambra State, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, and the Governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, as political figures associated with the coalition’s state-level coordination, alongside himself.
The minister said the coalition was not meant to displace the APC. The party, he said, remained the platform on which the president would seek re-election, while supporters outside it could work towards the same goal.
“The major thing is Mr President. Whatever we are going to do, whoever has any idea or anything to contribute is to the success of Mr President. That is the whole thing,” he said.
He pointed to the FCT as proof that the arrangement works. “We are going to vote for Mr. President, and the National Assembly candidates are for APC,” he said, before asking: “Why would anybody say there is a problem there?”
Wike also rejected the idea that the arrangement was new in Nigerian politics.
“When you say a new thing that never happened, I don’t think so,” he said, adding that such backing had existed before without being formalised. “But this time it came out because of the period we are in.”
He accused opposition politicians of misleading Nigerians about Tinubu’s performance. “Whether anybody likes it or not, Mr President has done well,” he said.
To show that praise for the president could come from outside the APC, he pointed to remarks attributed to the Governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed of the Allied Peoples Movement APM, acknowledging aspects of Tinubu’s performance.
“Politics must not be played as a do-or-die affair,” Wike said, adding that he had never hidden where he stood. “I have never hidden my intention any day, any time that I will support Mr. President”.
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