Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State, has reacted to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s endorsement of former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari come 2023.
Obasanjo made a public declaration of his support for the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) on Sunday, January 1, 2023.
The development has since generated mixed reactions among political actors and supporters of the opposition camps.
Reacting to the move by the former leader, Wike, who was speaking on Monday during the flag off of a road project in Emohua Local Government Area of Rivers State, said something must be wrong with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, for Obasanjo to have snubbed him for Obi.
Atiku was Obasanjo’s Vice from 1999-2003.
Wike said he had hoped that Obasanjo would not say anything about his preferred candidate, but that it came as a shock to him after the former leader announced Obi as his preferred candidate for the top Nigerian job.
He said it was funny that the engineer of the same legacies upon which Atiku was campaigning failed to recommend him but instead endorsed Obi.
Wike said: “If you are bad product, you are a bad product, if you are a good product, you are a good product.
“You worked under somebody, the person has recommended to Nigerians another person, is it me?
“I worked with somebody for eight years and we are using it as a campaign that when we were in office we did well, then my boss is recommending another person to be there, something is fundamentally wrong.
“I was praying that Obasanjo should not say anything, when I saw the letter last night I was touched.
“If your principal does not recommend you, then there’s something fundamentally wrong.”