TheCable

Rotimi Amaechi, minister of transportation, made reference to the US presidential election while addressing supporters of the All Progressive Congress (APC) ahead of the legislative rerun election in Rivers state.

According to THE NATION, Amaechi said candidates of the APC must win at all costs, and urged supporters of the party not to succumb to the alleged threats and intimidation of Nyesom Wike, governor of the state.

He promised that his party will match whatever antics and strategies deployed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the administration of Wike.

“If there is one place APC that shouldn’t campaign, it is Ogoniland but Wike said he must win here. It’s not as if he is God. Only God can say that but since he is not God, he will fail,” Amaechi reportedly told APC supporters in the Bera hometown of Magnus Abe, candidate of the APC in Rivers south-east senatorial district.

“Wike can never be God. The battle is not in Ogoniland but in the Ikwerre and Ahoada axis. So he had better forget here (Ogoniland). He said he will deploy everything. Anything he wants to deploy let him deploy, we will deploy our own.

“I will urge all of you if anybody threaten you, please threaten back because all Wike does is to come on the radio and you are scared.

“What are you scared of? ‘Oh they are rigging, oh I will kill you John,’ ‘I will kill you this and that’. He will kill nobody,

“Wike ran away when armed robbers came to attack him at Garrison sometimes back, meaning that he loves his life.

“Do not behave like democrats who went to sleep. Come out and vote.”

Taking a swipe at his successor, Amaechi condemned the role played by Wike during the attempt to arrest a judge in Rivers.

“If Wike likes, let him come out. At all times he had come out I used to ask does this man remember that he is a governor?” he asked.

“It is only a thug that can stand in front of a judge’s gate to be struggling with security men, only a thug.

“A governor will go back to his house and call the president. When SSS invaded the presidential lounge of Akwa Ibom state government, what the governor did was to call the president.

“Instead of Wike to call the president, he was struggling with security men.

“In all the fight I had with the federal government under former President Jonathan, nobody saw me physically battling with anybody.

“When I became governor, there were many people appointed by Dr. Peter Odili. There were so many businesses by Odili people. I didn’t stop any. Wike is indeed a thug, not a governor.

“He doesn’t know what it takes to govern. The only way to show him that is in this election. After this election, he will not come this way again.”