Nyesom Wike, governor of Rivers state, says most cabinet members in the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan took advantage of the gentlemanliness of the Nigerian leader.
Wike, who served as a minister under Jonathan, alleged that members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the north ganged-up against the former president in the build-up to the 2015 presidential election.
Jonathan lost the election to President Muhammadu Buhari.
“PDP in the north ganged up against Jonathan. Let the truth be told! Nobody will die! They were not sincere to him,” the governor said this in the current edition of The Interview.
“Let me tell you the truth; so many people were not sincere with Jonathan. You saw that even in the way some were being unduly sycophantic on issues that were totally out of point…I saw there was a lot of deceit.”.
In a statement, Azu Ishiekwene, MD/editor-in-chief of the magazine, said the current interview was “yet another riveting chapter in the unfolding story of Jonathan’s monumental defeat”.
Wike said members of Jonathan’s cabinet and ranking members of the PDP deceived the former president and told him “outright lies” about his chances.
He said there were situations where politicians who were supposed to be in the field holed up inside Abuja, filing false reports.
“Some of them would say, ‘Your Excellency, Sir, as I’m speaking with you now, so and so state is down for PDP’. It was all lies,” he was quoted to have said.
He said it was a mark of complicity that Jonathan was stoned in some states while the governors of those states watched idly.
“If I were in Jonathan’s shoes, I won’t take it; let the heavens fall!” he said.
He, however, said the PDP reconciliation committee of which he is chairman, had in their sights, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and top members of the ruling All Progressives Congress, including former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, among others.