2023: “Don’t end your political career” – Atiku’s camp warns Wike, others

As the 2023 election gathers steam, a spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Senator Dino Melaye, has expressed his hope that the G-5 governors’ imminent endorsement of their preferred candidate is not true.

POLITICS NIGERIA recalls that the ‘integrity group’ within the PDP led by the G5 governors – Nyesom Wike (Rivers State), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) – have been at loggerheads with the leadership of the party and Atiku Abubakar, insisting that the party’s National Chairman Iyorchia Ayu resigns because he is from the same zone as the presidential candidate.

Their demand is yet to be met.

Information available to this newspaper strongly suggests that the disgruntled governors would in the days ahead begin campaigns against Atiku in their respective states.

But reacting, Melaye said unfairly antagonising Atiku will ‘cost the G5 governors their political future’.

“No blackmail, hate, or outrageous envy will stop Atiku. I pray it is not true (G-5 governors’ imminent endorsement of their preferred candidate).

“Attacking Atiku will cost them their political future. You don’t fight a man who has done nothing to provoke you.

“Atiku’s only offence is that he won a presidential primary transparently and openly. No man should play God,” Punch quotes the ex-lawmaker as saying.

Melaye added: “It is too late to stop Atiku. They should have a re-think while they can.

“Atiku will be president because the people have decided.

‘’My advice to the G-5 is ‘don’t end your political career because of an inordinate ambition and capricious manifestation that will yield no result.’

“If they take that step, it will be the last kick of a dying horse.”