Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, just took a swing at Aisha Yesufu. He mocked her for failing to grab the NDC’s senate ticket in Abuja.
Wike spoke on Saturday in Port Harcourt at the Renewed Hope Luncheon. The event was put on by the Rainbow Coalition, a collection of parties in Rivers state that includes the APC and the PDP.
Yesufu joined the NDC from the African Democratic Congress and jumped into the FCT senate race on May 6. She pointed to the leadership experience she picked up in the ADC as her reason for running.
Yet within days word spread that the party had already handed the ticket to Amanda Pam, who had been a member longer. On Friday Yesufu released a statement saying the NDC would not hold primaries for the seat. That looked like the end of her bid.
Later that night she put out another statement. She insisted she had not withdrawn from the race. What she could not do, she said, was compromise her values in a process stained by injustice and a clear breach of the Electoral Act.
Wike went straight for her social media habit of using big words. “You saw what happened in the NDC,” he said. “There is one woman who said Wike is an appointee of the government and that she has no business with appointees.
“You speak grammar, speak grammar oh. Ordinary primary of NDC, not APC or PDP, just ordinary NDC, what happened? She didn’t make it.”
He argued that people who sound off loudly in the media often fall flat once real politics hits. “It’s easy for people to talk. When they enter into those media houses, they begin to churn out data from nowhere. Now, the time for data has come. What happened? Fa fa fa foul. It didn’t work. If e didn’t dey? E didn’t dey.
“You pontificate this and that. But when the time for pontification came, what happened? It didn’t work. And it will not work.”
Wike kept coming back to the value of real experience. He told people to line up behind those who actually understand the country, who get its politics, and who genuinely want to see it develop.
