By 247ureports.com
Videos circulating widely online, including a clip shared by Leadership, appear to show FCT Minister Nyesom Wike declining to shake hands with Imo State Governor Hope Uzodimma after speaking at the inauguration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council in Abuja on Wednesday, October 14.
In the footage, Wike finishes a speech in which he told council members not to claim victory if they fail to deliver their states for President Bola Tinubu, and then appears to move past Uzodimma without taking his hand. Neither man has commented, and 247ureports.com cannot say from the video alone whether the gesture was deliberate. 247ureports.com was unable to open the Leadership post itself.
The moment gains weight from the roles of the two men. Uzodimma is secretary of the campaign council and chairs the Progressive Governors’ Forum, which has resisted Wike’s cross-party Rainbow Coalition. Wike, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member, was named to coordinate the campaign in Rivers State and the FCT alongside two other non-APC figures, Anambra Governor Chukwuma Soludo and Osun Governor Ademola Adeleke, who will lead the effort in their states. At the event, Uzodimma said the APC controls 31 of the 36 states and has elected chairmen in about 685 of the 774 local government areas, and framed the January election as a choice between building on the foundation laid since 2023 or abandoning it.
The two have been at odds for weeks. Wike has criticised the Imo governor in several media interviews, and in one reported remark asked people to “ask him” whether Wike backed him when he sought a second term in 2023, saying he supported Uzodimma against the PDP candidate, who was his own national secretary. In a separate video from September, Wike said he would never support Uzodimma for Senate President. Uzodimma has largely shrugged off the attacks, with aides saying he is focused on a media and grassroots push for Tinubu’s re-election.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has used the inauguration to accuse the APC of “political abduction,” alleging that state power is being used to pull opposition governors into its campaign structure. The APC had not commented on the handshake episode at the time of this report.
