Rivers 2019: West challenges Wike for PDP ticket, vows to sack governor

Another aspirant, Soalabo West, has come out to challenge Governor Nyesome Wike for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, ticket in the 2019 governorship election.

West, a lawyer from Kalabari ethnic nationality, yesterday, announced his intention to challenge Wike for the PDP ticket.

He said that he was convinced that the Rivers Government House was now set for a riverine occupant and the push for a “new paradigm to make Rivers great again.”

He spoke to reporters in Port Harcourt, saying, “The circumstances that threw up Wike in 2015 had been actualized with his emergence as governor in 2015 under PDP, and it is now the turn of riverine communities to produce the governor of Rivers State in 2019.

“The argument then was that Rivers was a PDP state and we needed to wrest the leadership of the state from the All Progressives Congress, APC, the party which the then incumbent governor, Chibuike Amaechi, defected to in 2013.

“Governorship aspirants from riverine ethic nationalities were asked to work with Wike, not because the Upland/Riverine dichotomy was not there, but essentially because of imperatives of the time.

“One, that Rivers State should go to the PDP, and second, that the state should be properly mobilised to deliver majority votes to former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2019 presidential election.

“My appeal to our youths and all stakeholders now is to eschew violence and thuggery because, according to former President Goodluck Jonathan, nobody’s blood should be shed for anybody’s political ambition.”

West’s announcement came barely 24 hours after Wike formally declared to run for a second term.

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