Tinubu’s Victory: Nasir El-Rufai Tells Wike ‘Rivers Voted Quality Over Political Sentiments’

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai has commended his Rivers State counterpart, Nyesom Wike for supporting power rotation to the southern part of Nigeria.

El-Rufai stated this on Thursday when he joined Wike to commission the Eneka-Igbo Etche Link Road in the Obio-Akpo Local Government Area of the state.

According to him, the people of the oil-rich South-South state voted “quality over political sentiments”.

El-Rufai, who is a powerbroker in the All Progressives Congress (APC), said
“I want to, on behalf of our presidential candidate and our party, thank you and the good people of Rivers State for making the right choice of voting for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“It is the first time since the Fourth Republic started in 1999 that the PDP was unable to get 25% in Rivers State. It shows that the people of Rivers State can differentiate and they know when to vote for quality and they voted for quality over political sentiments. We want to thank you for providing that leadership, Governor Wike.”

Recall that Wike, who is a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), had last year May lost his party’s presidential ticket to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar last May.

In the buildup to the February 25 presidential poll, Wike was unapologetically vocal about his opposition to the 2023 presidential ambition of Atiku and had argued that power return to the south after the eight-year tenure of the incumbent Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari who is from Katsina State in the North-West geopolitical zone.

To make this work, the Rivers governor teamed up with four other PDP governors and formed the G5 which is made up of Wike, Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), Samuel Ortom (Benue) and Seyi Makinde (Oyo).

Wike had on February 15, met with Tinubu in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers. The meeting was one of their several pre-election engagements. Due to public suspicion, Wike was quick to defend the meeting, saying he was free to receive anyone.

Tinubu eventually won the presidential winning 12 out of Nigeria’s 36 States. He secured significant numbers in several other states to claim the highest number of votes — 8,794,726, almost two million votes more than his closest rival, Atiku, who got 6,984,520 votes, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) finished the race with 6,101,533.

Atiku lost in all the G5 states while Obi won Enugu and Abia. Tinubu picked Oyo, Benue, and Rivers.

In other news, Kanyi Daily reported that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) on Thursday, said it arrested 352 suspects and seized 2.1 tonnes of illicit drugs in Kano State.

Abubakar Idris-Ahmad, NDLEA Commander in the state, disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).