The All Progressives Congress (APC), Rivers State Chapter, has challenged Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, to provide evidence to support his claim that six serving commissioners in the state have concluded plans to dump the party for the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

“This is nothing but idle talk and it exposes Wike as a shameless liar because no Commissioner in the Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi administration is contemplating defecting to the virtually non-existent PDP, not to talk of six of them leaving in one fell swoop for a party that is on its way to the graveyard in Rivers State,” Rivers APC said in a statement issued yesterday in Port Harcourt by its Chairman, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya.

Ikanya noted that “if Wike is a serious mind, he would have mentioned the names of the six imaginary Commissioners that allegedly gave him advance notice of their purported intention to dump APC for the embattled PDP.” The APC State Chairman dismissed Wike’s expectation in this regard as “a malaria dream and mere wishful thinking as none of our Commissioners in the present State EXCO is either contemplating or planning such a suicidal step of joining PDP that will soon disintegrate.”

He said that “to the contrary, several of the characters parading themselves as governorship aspirants under the dying PDP platform have entered into serious negotiations with our party leadership with a view to joining APC as the undisputable PDP Leader in Rivers State, Her Excellency, Dame Patience Jonathan, has refused to anoint any of them. In this regard, it is unfortunate that Chief Wike seems not to be in the picture that he will in the next few weeks be expelled from PDP for anti-party activities to pave the way for the First Lady’s anointed candidate.”

Ikanya insisted that APC is now the last bus stop for any serious politician in Rivers State, adding that the party is gearing up to announce the demise of PDP in the state after Mama Peace (Dame Jonathan) executes her plan to impose an unpopular governorship candidate on the party.

The Rivers State APC Chairman similarly dismissed as a joke the claim by South-South PDP Zonal Secretary, Mr. Joe Onyewelu, that the party would recapture Rivers and Edo states during the 2015 general elections.

“This,” according to Ikanya, “is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of PDP states as the great feats of Governors Amaechi in Rivers State and Adams Oshiomhole in Edo have given the people a good idea of what good governance looks like, thereby sealing the fate of the discredited PDP, not only in the two states, which they under-developed, but, indeed, throughout the Niger Delta and elsewhere across the country.”

•Photo shows Wike.