A faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has dismissed a call by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike for the party’s candidates to collapse their structures and support President Bola Tinubu’s re-election in 2027.

The party declared that it will not support the president’s second-term bid.

In a press statement titled “PDP Will Not Support Tinubu’s Re-election,” the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Ini Ememobong, said the remarks credited to Wike were nothing new. He said the message was not directed at real PDP members but at people who, like Wike, are pretenders in the opposition while working for the governing party.

The statement was issued on behalf of the party’s Interim National Working Committee.

Ememobong said the true and principled members of the PDP are not part of what he called the shameless, self-serving support for the APC-led federal government and its destructive policies.

He argued that the paramount duty of an opposition party is to offer Nigerians an alternative to the incumbent, not to massage egos. If opposition parties must form an alliance, he said, it should be among themselves and not with the ruling party.

The statement singled out the so-called “rainbow coalition” backing Tinubu, which Ememobong described as a political anomaly and the greatest threat to electoral democracy. He said it was the fastest way of railroading the country into an electoral monarchy.

He also urged Nigerians to be wary of what he called elite accommodation and state capture masquerading as broad-based political collaboration, and said next year’s election is a chance to vote out insensitive and irresponsible political actors.

The party urged its true and faithful members to remain steadfast while awaiting a judicial decision that it hopes will return the PDP to its rightful owners. It said its case at the Court of Appeal has been heard and judgment is awaited, adding that the judiciary is conscious that justice delayed is justice denied.

Wike made his latest call at a meeting with Rivers State stakeholders, where he sought the support of Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s camp for Tinubu. He told them everybody in the PDP must support the president, but added that his backing does not extend to every elective position in Rivers. He said politics is local and that he would not allow the APC to take everything.

The PDP has been split for months between the Turaki-led faction, which includes Ememobong, and a Wike-backed caretaker leadership. The Wike camp has said it will mobilise for Tinubu while still fielding PDP candidates in governorship, National Assembly and State Assembly elections. Wike has maintained that the rainbow coalition is not an arrangement with the APC. He describes it as a platform for members of different parties who back the president’s re-election.