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- The governor of River State, Nyesom Wike, denies rigging the election to defeat Labour Party candidate Peter Obi (LP).
Wike was alleged to have bribed Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officials in a widely circulated audio recording to rig the presidential election.
Peter Aneke challenged Wike about the claims of rigging during the meeting on behalf of the Igbo sociopolitical group.
Aneke questioned why Wike would “operate against the Igbo in a presidential contest where the candidacy of Peter Obi was a low-hanging fruit” notwithstanding the proximity between the residents of the south-east and Rivers state.
He explained to the governor how disappointed and resentful the Igbo was that Obi had won in Lagos, Abuja, and other northern cities but had recorded such poor results in Rivers.
In the elections held on February 25 and won by Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Obi received 6,101,533 votes.
Friday, Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s national press secretary, Alex Ogbonnia, said in a statement that Wike spoke to the organization’s members on Thursday in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers state.
But on Thursday night, when an Ohanaeze delegation in Rivers State approached Wike about his alleged involvement in Peter Obi’s loss in the election, Wike responded to the accusations.
The transcript of the conversations between Wike and the Ohanaeze delegation, states that Wike informed the delegation that there was never any discussion of zoning the presidency to Southeast Nigeria during the meetings of the Southern Governors in Delta, Lagos, and Enugu.
