Supreme Court Verdict: I would have withdrawn from contesting again-Wike.

    Supreme Court Verdict: I would have withdrawn from contesting again-Wike.
    Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State said in Port Harcourt on Sunday that he wouldn’t have re-contested the governorship election in the state if he had lost at the Supreme Court.
    Wike’s election as the governor of the state was nullified by the Election Petition Tribunal and the Court of Appeal before the apex court reversed it on Wednesday.
    Wike’s election was nullified due to the petition by the Governorship Candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Dakuku Peterside.
    Speaking at the thanksgiving to mark his victory, Wike said that he had told few of his supporters that he was not going to recontest because of the expected bloodshed that would have followed the election.
    Praising his legal team, which he said consist of 21 Senior Advocates of Nigeria, Wike said, “Blood would have flown if the election was going to hold again. Many people were being arrested.
    “I called some people including the Chairman of the PDP, Uche Secondus that I was not going to run again. They said why and I explained that if I did, many people would die.”
    Wike said that he was having high blood pressure because his close allies were defecting to other parties.
    “On the day of the judgment, we were sitting in the parlour when my CSO came to tell me that I was going to lose, and I would be arrested.
    “I asked him to leave my house. He said whether there was nothing we could do, I said he should leave.
    “I pray that my enemy should continue to have permanent high blood pressure. I wouldn’t pray that God will heal them.
    “My own has come down now, and for seven months it was high. It is time for their own to rise.
    “Members of the Assembly (whose elections were nullified) would come and cry here. Sen. Sekibo would come here and pray that I should win first and that my own is better.
    “Some of them sold all they had to win the election, but their elections were nullified. Some just married and told their wives that it would be better but only to be sacked seven months later.”
    Wike also said that his government would not support the lopsided efforts of President Muhammadu Buhari to wage war against corruption in the country accusing the federal government of fighting a one-sided war against corruption.
    Wike said, “We would not support the fight against corruption. People took our money from the state, and we wrote to the police asking them to go and make a statement, nothing has come out of it.
    “We won’t take anybody to the EFCC because I know what would happen. We know how to fight our own way. We won’t support that war against corruption that they are doing.”
    Wike also told the church not to raise any project offering, saying that he has “security report that today is not good for such offering.”
    Reception, which he said was going to hold at the Government House, was meant for “my own people”, and asked indigenes of the state not to attend.
    The majority of the attendees at the occasion left with long faces as they seemed to have been disappointed in the governor’s pronouncement.
    The church service was attended by governors of Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and the Abia States, as well as prominent politicians in the state who are members of the PDP.
    END