The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, has said that former President Goodluck Jonathan has not informed him of any intention to contest the 2027 presidential election.
Wike made this known during a media parley with journalists in Abuja on Friday while reacting to claims that Jonathan was under pressure to return to the presidential race.
‘You’re the one telling me here. Jonathan has never told me; he has never called me one day that, look, I’m being pressured to run, what’s your thinking? If he calls me and asks me, I will be able to tell him my mind and what I feel,’ Wike said.
He added, ‘I will not because you people put something on the pages of the newspapers – just like you said they flew me out of the country – then, I now assume it’s correct.’
Wike also spoke on the emergence of former Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN), as the consensus candidate for the position of National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), distancing himself from the development.
‘I don’t know about Tanimu Turaki becoming chairman; maybe he becomes chairman for another faction – it’s not the PDP I know,’ he stated.
The PDP Northern stakeholders had recently endorsed Turaki as their consensus candidate ahead of the party’s national convention scheduled for November 15-16 in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Speaking further, Wike dismissed the upcoming convention as illegal and hinted that he would not attend.
‘How do you want me to attend a convention that I know by law that there is no convention?’ he queried.