Why I Can’t Fight Tinubu – PDP Governor Explains
Akwa Ibom State Governor, Umo Emo has reiterated that he will continue to collaborate with President Bola Tinubu despite their political affiliation.
Eno made this known while receiving hundreds of decampees from various opposition parties, including the APC, Young Progressives Party (YPP), New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), and others, into the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state.
The governor noted that he couldn’t fight President Tinubu or allow his administration to engage in unhealthy rivalry with the federal government, which could negatively impact the development of the state and the people, as articulated in his administration’s ‘Arise Agenda’.
He vowed that he would never work at cross purposes with the centre, as doing so would only strain the relationship between the state, which depends on the centre for monthly cash for its development.
The PDP governor warned the defectors against bringing bad influence into the party, especially insulting political leaders.
He said: “I cannot fight President Tinubu, we cannot fight the centre. We have only one President of Nigeria and we must not attack or insult him. We will not use Akwa Ibom’s money to fight the centre because if you fight the centre, the centre can no longer hold.
“You can’t fight the person that gives you money and resources and expect him to continue to give you. If we use Akwa Ibom money to create trouble with the centre, and use it to be traveling to Abuja every day, it is the people that will suffer.”
Governor Eno noted that since his assumption of office in the last 10 months, he has effectively used the resources from the centre to fix physical infrastructure, including roads, provide social services—education, health, gratuity payment to retired civil servants, and care for the aged, maintaining that such a robust relationship with the centre cannot be truncated by politics’s sentiment.
He, therefore, enjoined the returnees to acclimatize themselves to the PDP fold as equal stakeholders while directing the State PDP Chairman, Elder Aniekan Akpan, to ensure equal rights and privileges for them in their new political home.
