Wike’s alleged poisoning, beer hall gossip, says former PDP scribe

Nyseom Wike’s allegations that he was poisoned at the PDP secretariat in 2018 have been characterised as “beer parlour chats” by the Peoples Democratic Party’s Immediate Past National Secretary, Senator Ibrahim Tsauri.

At a family Thanksgiving celebration held in Wike’s honour two weeks ago in Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, he claimed his liver and kidneys quit working after he was allegedly poisoned at the PDP secretariat.

“Starting on that Sunday, I never left my room. It was terrible, but everybody who was present at the 2019 state dinner on January 1 will recall that I remained silent the whole event. I simply sat down and asked my deputy governor to represent me.

“People were unaware of what was happening. I believed it was done after that banquet, but by midnight I was being escorted out of the country. When we arrived in Beirut, I was gazing at the physicians and they were looking at me. They didn’t provide any information to me. We supposedly had to take a lot of tests.

But thanks to divine providence, God suddenly turned around the dreadful situation and started restoring the damaged organs right away.

A PDP National Executive Committee member named Tsauri questioned: “If Wike was poisoned, who did the poisoning? We don’t discuss or make comments about matters that just concern a beer hall. We can comment if Wike named certain people or organisations by name.

“You should also try to figure out when, when, and how he made those assertions,” the former federal politician continued. In sociolinguistics, you infer meaning from a person’s manner of speaking rather than from the words they use.

We still consider Mr. Wike to be a PDP member, hence we prefer not to criticise him for his statements. He has always been that way, so you shouldn’t expect him to change just because he recently vacated the executive branch of government. Give him time to process the out-of-office betrayals by people he thought were his pals.

However, Chief Ogbonna Nwuke, a former commissioner for information and communications for the state of Rivers, quickly criticised Tsauri for politicising such a severe situation.

“This is the kind of response you get when people are horrified by your profile and the fact that they are disappointed when they believe you don’t matter. This is ignorant.

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Why won’t he travel to Beirut to confirm the veracity of the former governor’s assertion? Or would he rather the man pass away? How can you play politics with something as important as someone’s health and life? Nwuke asked.

He said, “I assume they are the ones having beer parlour conversations because their comments are meaningless.

The fact that Wike is still speaking and addressing issues of national importance has plainly disappointed those who believed he would keep quiet after leaving his position as governor.