The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has accused the Governors of Imo and Kwara States, Senator Hope Uzodinma and Alhaji Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, of working against him, saying both men failed to reciprocate political support he extended to them.
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Speaking at a media chat in Port Harcourt, the former Rivers State governor also disclosed how he and his allies worked to ensure that President Bola Tinubu defeated Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi in 2023, said he would be the first casualty if the opposition wins in 2027, declared his predecessor Rotimi Amaechi unfit for the office of vice president, and accused the Nigerian Bar Association of behaving like a political party.
Wike said the Kwara governor had led a campaign against him.
“Take for example, Kwara, he has been the one championing this campaign against me everywhere. Yes, I have confronted him too. I don’t talk about what I cannot defend,” he said.
According to him, the governor accused him of sponsoring candidates against his preferred choices in the state. Wike countered that the governor ought to be grateful to him for offering a platform in the Peoples Democratic Party to aggrieved APC figures who might otherwise have joined the anti-Tinubu coalition.
He also referred to a strained relationship with the Imo State governor, recalling that Uzodinma once declined to support him despite the support Wike had given him.
The minister said the disputes would not distract him from his focus on the President’s re-election, and challenged those who accuse him of working against APC governors to state what support they had given him in his own political battles.
“Any Nigerian who knows me knows I have never hidden my intention,” he said.
Contacted on the matter, the Imo State governor declined comment. Uzodinma chairs the APC Governors’ Forum, while Abdulrazaq is chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum.
A top source close to the APC governors said Wike’s National Rainbow Coalition was set up to create confusion among the electorate and reduce the President’s votes.
Sources close to the President said Tinubu had been briefed that the coalition might affect his votes across the states, with the concerns raised by governors at a recent meeting in Abuja.
The coalition, led by Wike, has fielded candidates in the PDP for National Assembly elections, which hold on the same day as the presidential poll. The governors argue that the arrangement could fragment the President’s vote strength, and allege that some coalition members are using his name publicly while promoting their own candidacies locally, with instructions to followers to vote PDP down the ballot.
They contend that most voters do not split tickets, citing Oyo State in 2023, where the PDP, then the ruling party at state level, lost National Assembly seats while backing Tinubu’s presidential bid.
The coalition is not limited to Kwara. It has candidates in Gombe, Cross River, Zamfara, Kwara and other states. In Cross River, a similar alignment of PDP, Labour and ADC elements is challenging Governor Bassey Otu.
Sources said the governors want the party leadership to intervene, describing the coalition as a danger to the President’s re-election that needs urgent attention.
Wike disclosed what he described as a deliberate strategy to defeat Atiku Abubakar in 2023, saying the plan turned on denying him the support of key PDP structures in favour of Peter Obi.
“Do you know what we did in 2023? Let me tell you now to shock you. We knew that the man who was controlling the election was Atiku. Forget about all the noise about Obi. We gave it to him, take the South-East,” he said.
He said the then Benue State governor, Samuel Ortom, was central to the plan.
“We knew his bias, we knew what was going to happen because of the Muslim-Muslim ticket. We wanted to block Atiku, so we said, support Obi. It was a strategy. We wanted to defeat him, yes. And he took it,” Wike said.
He maintained that the arrangement deprived Atiku of South-South support that could have changed the outcome, and that the PDP’s defeat was determined by its own internal calculations rather than any external factor.
Wike said he would be the first to suffer if Atiku of the ADC or Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress defeats Tinubu in 2027.
“I will be the first politician that I think they will come after. I will be the first politician. I know they will come for my head,” he said.
He said he had no regrets and would not shy away from confronting the President’s opponents.
“Each day I sleep, I am thinking about the president’s re-election. When I am eating, I think about the president’s re-election. Everything I am doing now is about the president’s re-election,” he said.
On the criticism his position has attracted, he said: “I don’t see where anybody in this country today has been called names the way my name has been. I am not bothered about people who say their own thing. My business is, like I said, I am going to support Mr President.”
Asked whether he would stand aside in 2027, he replied: “You want me to fold my arms for Atiku Abubakar to come and win the election?”
Wike predicted that Tinubu would take at least 25 per cent of the vote in every northern state, while Atiku would fail to reach 10 per cent in many southern states.
“There is no way in the north that the President will not make 25 per cent. There are so many places in the south Atiku won’t have 10 per cent,” he said.
On the North-Central, he named specific states. “Let’s take North-Central. Who will win in Plateau? The President will take Plateau. He will win Nasarawa. He will win Kwara. He will win Kogi.”
He dismissed the argument that economic hardship would cost the President the election. “Is there any election that had no hunger in Nigeria? Mention one election. Even Buhari’s election, people were talking about insecurity, hunger. Everybody still voted.”
The minister’s sharpest attack was directed at Amaechi, who is running mate to Atiku Abubakar on the African Democratic Congress ticket.
“Rotimi Amaechi, who wants to be vice president today, once shut down the courts in Rivers State and caused a pregnant woman to give birth in prison,” Wike alleged.
He argued that such a record should automatically disqualify an aspirant from sensitive executive office, and that a history of undermining the judiciary cannot be set aside, urging Nigerians to examine the past conduct of politicians who present themselves as defenders of democracy and the rule of law.
Wike extended the criticism to the Nigerian Bar Association, which held its 66th Annual General Conference in Port Harcourt last week.
“The Nigerian Bar Association has now taken sides politically. They are now a political party,” he said.
He argued that the Association should remain an independent institution devoted to upholding the rule of law rather than serving as an arena for political contests or offering platforms that amount to partisan endorsements.
The minister dismissed reports that he was moving back to Rivers State, saying his frequent visits are about political engagement rather than abandoning his duties in Abuja.
“It is not about relocating; it is about coming home to relate with the people and talk to them, and also do those things you know how to do very well, not to take chances. So, I’m not relocating. I don’t need to relocate, but I also have to be in touch with my people, so I don’t just sit in Abuja and then say everything is going on well there,” he said.
He added that he would not rely on assurances from associates ahead of 2027. “I don’t want to sit in Abuja and candidates are saying, ‘Oh, don’t bother, everything is going on well.’” He also noted that his parents are alive and that his personal and political ties to the state make regular visits necessary.
Responding to comments by Peter Obi on the management of subsidy removal gains, Wike said the President has no power to direct how states and local governments spend the additional revenue.
“All he should have asked is, ‘having removed the subsidy, what do you do with the gains?’ This is what I think a reasonable person should talk about,” he said.
“Now, the government said the gains have been shared among sub-nationals. Tinubu has no power to say, ‘states, this is what you should do with the funds that you’ve got from the fuel subsidy.’ He has no power to tell local governments what to do with their money. All tiers of government are independent.”
He said larger allocations had strengthened states that once struggled to pay salaries and pensions, and credited the President with a decision his predecessors avoided. “Tinubu deserves kudos for taking the bold decision no president took. Now, it’s time for states to account for the funds they have got.”
The media chat is best read as one argument in several parts, and the parts explain each other.
The 2023 disclosure is the key to the rest. On Wike’s own account, he did not merely oppose Atiku; he engineered a diversion of PDP structures toward Obi in order to defeat him. That admission tells you why he treats the 2027 contest in existential terms. A man who says he organised a candidate’s defeat and then names that candidate’s running mate as unfit for office is not describing a policy disagreement. It is also why the phrase “I know they will come for my head” carries weight rather than melodrama.
The quarrel with the two governors sits on the same foundation. The complaint is transactional and openly so: he says he gave support and received none. What the APC governors say in reply is more consequential than the personal grievance. Their objection is that the National Rainbow Coalition is fielding PDP candidates for the National Assembly on the same ballot as a presidential candidate it claims to support, which puts a structural risk under the ruling party’s legislative majority rather than under the President’s own vote. That is the story to watch, and it is one that will be settled by results rather than by interviews.
For the Bar, the significant line is the shortest one. A serving minister and Life Bencher has said publicly that the NBA has become a political party. It follows his refusal to attend the conference in his own state and his complaint about who was given the podium there. Whatever one makes of the messenger, the charge lands on an association a week into a new presidency, and it is the second such charge in a fortnight. The new leadership will have to decide whether its conference platform carries an implied endorsement of those who speak from it, and say so plainly, or accept that the question will be asked again each August.
Two things in the account remain unresolved. The allegation about the courts and the pregnant woman is serious, is contested, and has never been tested in any forum; it should not harden into fact through repetition. And the claim that hunger has never decided a Nigerian election is an assertion about voter behaviour, not a finding. Both belong in the record as what they are: the minister’s case, forcefully put.
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