Appraising Wike: A Candid Political Prognosis
By Mobolaji Sanusi
“A good example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.”———Anonymous
Nyesom Wike has firmly emerged as a celebrated power broker under the current political dispensation. From historical records, he didn’t just arrive at this destination without fighting battles. Some he won by sheer providential interventions, others with unbridled political resilience. But one thing is clear, he has, within the past ten years, established himself as a political warlord with a big war chest and vast connections in the right places.
There are several instances to buttress these assertions. For example, his reelection as his home state’s local government chairman, after serving his first term was guaranteed by the accidental meeting and intervention that had a touch of providence of then governor, Dr. Peter Odili, who vetoed the truncation of his second term candidacy for Obio-Akpor Local Government Area when his name was almost removed from the list.
Later, he moved to join the tortuous battle for the restoration of Rotimi Amaechi’s governorship ticket and after the Apex Court’s miracle verdict that proclaimed him governor, Amaechi compensated him because of his committed roles in his ascension struggles by appointing him as his Chief of Staff. And when they fell apart, he meandered his way to emerge as a minister of the federal republic of Nigeria under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan. He used the opportunity of that position to successfully launch the battle to succeed Amaechi as governor and ruled the state for two terms of eight years.
Unlike other governors before him in Rivers State who failed to install their preferred successors, Wike set the precedent of handpicking his successor in Governor Sim Fubara. But against his own public pronouncement that after his governorship duty, he would not jostle for any political appointment having failed to secure the vice-presidential slot to veteran presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON, Wike resurfaced in Abuja where President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, graciously appointed him as the high profile minister of the Federal Capital Territory(FCT). The first southerner to occupy the position.
In Abuja, he battled the Abuja mafia that saw him as attempting to unsettle the progress-retarding status quo ante cartel in the FCT. While slugging it out with the cartel, his installed successor in his home state, Fubara, was fomenting the battle for political independence which Wike wasn’t ready to give.
As a man who is used to fighting battles, even at the shortest notice, he fought Fubara to sustain his domestic political survival and to preserve his inexorably rising political profile in Abuja. In the end, he taught Fubara a great lesson by not only making the state ungovernable for him but in also stimulating a volatile political environment through his foot soldiers on ground that led to the imposition of an emergency rule in Rivers. With emergency rule in place, the contentious local government elections conducted by Fubara was annulled, in supposed obedience to the apex court’s judgment.
Finally last Saturday, a fresh local government election conducted in the twenty-three local governments in the state returned Wike as the indisputable godfather of Rivers State politics. The exercise adjudged by observers to be peaceful, surprisingly saw the All Progressives Congress(APC) won twenty councils while the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state of which Wike is a member, won a paltry three council areas.
Wike, with his delicate hybrid brand of politics, is now firmly in control of the grassroots across Rivers state.
The FCT minister can henceforth reassert his authority over APC and PDP machineries and also be in-charge of the local councils’ chairmen, councillors and more importantly, grassroots mobilisation. He is strategically brainy enough to rename his group after the president’s political shibboleth: Renewed Hope Agenda bloc. By this nomenclature, his loyal tendencies in both APC and PDP are now firmly under his influence ahead of the 2027 general election. Effectively now, Wike, not Fubara, when the emergency rule is lifted, will dictate the modus of delegates’ selection and equally who gets what ticket in the upcoming and subsequent primaries. His national political influence as a strong south-south leader is now gradually, if not already solidified.
A subregional powerbroker in Wike, if he manages his affairs well, is now in the making. He can now consolidate his networks and loyalty base as a trusted ally of the president. But for how long can Wike play the president’s game? Except he decides to commit self-inflicted political suicide, his loyalty to the president cannot falter between now and 2027. Again. Would he have helped our current president if Atiku had picked him as his running mate in late 2022? After 2027, especially if Wike is not reappointed or that his FCT portfolio, which today stands unlikely, is changed, won’t his current disposition to the president change?
By 2031, ceteris paribus, apologies to the economists, when the president would have finished his second term in office, won’t Wike turn against him if he thinks political calculations preferred by the president are not favourable to his aspirations?
Yours sincerely is asking these questions because of the cautionary aphorism of that Chinese philosopher that championed personal and governmental morality, Confucius when he said: “The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute. The man who does not ask is a fool for life.” Because l do not want to be a fool for life in view of Wike’s antecedents in actions and words, which are not favourable to the president and even the APC that is the central government party. His 2022/23 actions and uttered words most especially, lacked political integrity and character.
Barrister Wike spewed out statements and put up conducts against the president and his party that should make a right thinking person ponder on whether his seeming current “absolute political loyalty to the president” is not something fleeting and for his current political survival? In our assessments of persons, Frank Herbert admonished us to ask: “Do actions agree with words? There’s your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”
For a concise juxtaposition, past and present actions and words should be used if we’re desirous of arriving at an empirically appropriate conclusions on the FCT minister.
Wike was once caught on camera espousing denigrative statements on our president and APC: Lets highlight two instances and the first being where he alluded to one of our dear president’s campaign statements; he derisively enthused: “I heard people declaring for APC saying that they want to continue the good job of Mr President (Buhari). Is it the good job of people dying everyday? Is it the good job of naira falling everyday? I feel so ashamed that we have gotten to the level of sycophancy. Where people will come and say they want to continue the good job of Buhari….What is the good job of Buhari? Is hunger the good job? Is poverty and insecurity the good job? Or the economy falling the good job? It’s such a shameful thing. I can’t believe that someone will come out in today’s Nigeria and say I want to continue where Buhari has stopped.”
The second being at a point in time when asked if he’ll leave PDP for APC: He sarcastically declared: “Leave for where? I presently have malaria that can be treated easily and I will go and look for cancer that will kill me immediately?….Is the APC a party? A party that has killed Nigerians? No way, I can’t leave the PDP for such a party. Any fight we engage in the PDP is inside the PDP and that is where I will fight. If they like, they injure me there or I injure them but I won’t ever run away. Though I know they cannot injure me….That is where we will fight our fight but to leave the PDP that has common malaria for the APC that has cancer, no, it can’t happen.”
Who knows what Wike will say about our current president if they developed strained political relationships somewhere along the line? If for nothing, we have seen and heard words and dispositions of Wike to some of his past political benefactors including Dr Peter Odili, Dr & Mrs Goodluck Jonathan, Rotimi Amaechi and others.
Yours sincerely is only just being futuristically cautious by drawing our dear president’s attention to what a politically cantankerous Wike could do, after all, Wolfgang Schauble once said that “reliability is the precondition for trust.” Also, Confucius’ disdain for unreliable people under whatever guise is unsparing when he referred to them as “utterly useless.”
It is necessary to point out that this piece is not out to denigrate Wike who is widely seen, acknowledged and justly celebrated as “Mr Projects” during his 8-year tenure as governor of Rivers State. The same commendable template of projects’ initiatives, he has been implementing in the FCT infrastructural turnaround, as its hardworking minister.
Most times, habits develop into character and following from this, the reliability of Wike’s political character is somehow questionable and to protect our President, this necessitates the need to advert our minds to this detrimental political temperament of Wike and to prepare an antidote for curtailing him when the time comes.
Besides the aforementioned, ride on the presidential beloved Barrister Nyesom Wike, the Mr Projects of the FCT.
•Sanusi, former LASAA MD/CEO is a managerial psychologist and currently the managing partner of AMS RELIABLE SOLICITORS.
