Reporter: Honourable Minister, asides from all the political talk, the average Nigerian has been complaining of hunger and now we are seeing people who have served as two-term Governors and Minister also saying the hunger has come to them. So, it feels like hunger promax at this point in time. How is the your administration and the Renewed Hope administration addressing this specifically?
Wike: You know one thing I don’t like in this Nigeria: We have the time to listen to junks
Reporter: But they are influential people
Wike: What influential? What makes them influential?
Reporter: A former Governor? A former Minister?
Wike: Hold on! You are talking about Rotimi Amaechi?
Reporter: Yes Sir
Wike: So you have to be specific. I don’t know how a man will choose his 60th birthday to tell lies. It’s unfortunate that at this time that people are celebrating you on your 60th birthday you choose to tell lies to Nigerians. You are hungry, let us tell ourselves the truth.
He was Speaker 1999-2007 and if anybody knows he was the most pamoered Speaker in Nigeria. He was reading Law in London as a Speaker 1999-2007. He became a Governor 2007-2015, he was still reading Law in London. 8 years as Speaker, Rivers State House of Assembly, 8 years as Governor of Rivers State, you never spoke about hunger. You became a Minister from 2015-2023, 8 years as a Super-Minister, where you were borrowing money from banks and loans, here and there you didn’t talk about hunger. 2 years, you only left power and you are in a coalition and you are saying you are hungry, you are only hungry for power and that’s failure on his own part. How will you bring up the issue of hunger and poverty, why insult the intelligence of Nigerians? Why will you do that? You join Atiku, you join El-Rufai because you are hungry.
Have you not insulted Nigerians? Just that you cannot stay out of power and you talk of hunger. How can a man who has been in power since 1999 till 2023, stand before Nigerians, a man who has presided over trillions of naira. This was the same man on National television, who told Nigerians that he doesn’t like money meanwhile dollar was showing and you are telling Nigerians you don’t like money. You then say he is influential, where is the influence?, the thing with us is that we overrate people.
Let me tell you, he was Governor in 2015, he couldn’t produce a successor, he was a Minister in 2019, he couldn’t give his Candidate, Muhammadu Buhari common 25%. He was a sitting Minister in 2019, no sitting President has moved with soldiers, the way he came with soldiers, he said he will produce a Governor, he couldn’t even produce a Candidate. Again in 2019, he was DG of Campaign, Buhari didn’t make 25%. In 2023, he said okay he will support Atiku, thank God we did not support PDP, if we had supported PDP and Atiku won, he would have taken the glory, but they failed, couldn’t even make 10%. So what is he’s influential?
