By Steve Nwabuko
Nyesom Wike means many things to many people.
A lawyer, deadly raw and calculative politician, bombastic communicator, sleek operator, transactional socialite, musician and acrobatic dancer, tempestuous negotiator, belligerent fixer, scenario interpreter, mind reader, diminutive and assertive loyal agent and combative eccentric leader of rejuvenated and high adrenaline powered enforcer.
Nyesom Wike is more hated than liked by many due to his brash style, abrasiveness, stone faced carriage, opulence, mendacity, unguarded eloquence, haughty looks, connection complex and show of force.
But like him or hate him, Nyesom Wike is a child of due season.
Nyesom Wike stood up against the administration of former President Buhari and told him pointedly that his APC Government was cancerous to the continued existence and survival of Nigerians.
When some Northern States established hisbah as Islamic police and started destroying alcoholic beverages in the North but still got shares from alcoholic VAT revenues from the South and non-Islamic States, Nyesom Wike said that Rivers State is a Christian State since the Federal Government turned blind eyes to the excesses of constitutional infringements without redress.
Nyesom Wike performed well as two-term Governor of Rivers State from 2015 to 2023 with the array of infrastructural projects upgrade credited to his administration in Rivers State.
However, the build up to the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, produced a wounded lion, tiger, elephant, fox, squirrel and serpent in Nyesom Wike’s political playbook to surmount his traducers and put his political competitors in perpetual abeyance in the corridors of power.
Nyesom Wike is the headache, fever, diabetes, arthritis and high blood pressure ailing the two big parties in Nigeria today which are the PDP and APC.
PDP wants Nyesom Wike out of the party, but he has refused to leave.
APC wants Nyesom Wike into their fold, but he has not decided to join them.
By holding Rivers State politics in it’s jugular, Nyesom Wike has become the undisputed heavy weight politician of the fourth Republic Nigeria by dictating affairs in the South and upbraiding incursions and obsession of power grab by the north in 2027.
Nyesom Wike’s rating in Igbo land is very low because of his erratic public claims of being non Igbo even when his name, origin and history suggests otherwise.
Nyesom Wike’s Presidential ambition in 2023 elections made him denounce and worked against a Peter Obi presidential interest in PDP for which reason Peter Obi decamped to the Labour Party in 2022.
Nyesom Wike got himself outfoxed, outwitted and outmatched by his hitherto northern political friends in Atiku Abubakar, Tambuwal, Bala Mohammed, Lamido Sule Lamido when the case for PDP to give its presidential ticket to a candidate from the south according to the PDP constitution on zoning fell flat to mischief and manipulation against PDP constitution.
Rather than stick to zoning, Atiku Abubakar and his northern acolytes conspired to form a committee to determine the zoning issue and the committee which was largely made up of Atiku Abubakar’s political protégés recommended consensus arrangement by which a candidate from the north can be accommodated to run in the presidential primaries in 2022.
Nyesom Wike saw this as sabotage but the worst was to happen on the day of PDP presidential primaries at Eagle square in Abuja in 2022 when key presidential candidates of the northern extraction stepped down for Atiku Abubakar and instructed their followers to vote for him.
This was endgame for Nyesome Wike’s Presidential ambition but the beginning of his irredentist boisterous political megalomaniac.
Nyesom Wike could no longer trust his northern friends and the northern political Elites in the PDP.
The last straw that broke the camel’s back was the selection of Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, then Governor of Delta state as Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in the 2023 Presidential election.
This move got Nyesome Wike rise to brutal political machinations by first arranging the winning of the gubernatorial election in Rivers state for PDP under his control, and gifting the winning of the presidential election in Rivers state to his new concubinage, the APC Presidential candidate that ultimately won the presidential election.
Nyesom Wike went broke, pulled the roof off the PDP, snatched a plum ministerial job offer from APC, crippled Rivers state PDP and hijacked the APC Rivers state party apparatuses and castrated it’s portfolio holders.
The capacity of Nyesome Wike to do all these and still hold forth his combat innuendos is sagacious political megalomaniac.
Three things stand out in Nyesom Wike’s political pursuits:
First, he has cut out a place for himself as an essential political stakeholder in southern Nigeria.
Second, he has checkmated the northern bourgeoisie political elites that they can no longer ride roughshod in the politics of southern Nigeria in determining who gets what, when and how.
Thirdly, he has decapitated, and dismantled the invincibility of political parties in Nigeria’s democratic structures.
In essence, political power is no longer gotten at the polling boots but by the pronouncements of the election umpire and exigencies of innocuous judicial verdicts.
Nyesom Wike’s response to the betrayal of the north against him is his current alliance with the South West to ensure that those who conspired against him will not have access to political power at the center and in his home state of Rivers state.
However, as 2027 general elections draws closer, and Nyesom Wike’s political enemies forming a grand mega alliance to disengage the APC from power, the pertinent questions become:
Can Nyesom Wike continue to disregard and disdain the South East in contributing to his bigger votes catches to neutralise the imminent northern votes amalgamation consequent to defeating the current landlord in Aso Rock villa?
Will impeaching Governor Sim Fubara help Nyesome Wike’s grip over Rivers state politics or exercebate deep ethnic divisions in the politics of the South South and open up southern Nigeria for massive incursions and foothold by the incipient mega alliance in the pipeline by opposition parties?
Will the power of incumbency overshadow the real results from elections in 2027?
What are the likely security implications of rigging and announcing fake election results in 2027?
Can Nyesom Wike transform himself from boisterous political megalomaniac to dexterous political strategist in thawing the tension in Rivers state by reconciling with his political godson, Sim Fubara, reconciling with the Igbo race and becoming the bridge channel between the South and North before the 2027 general elections?.
History repeats itself in that just as the first republic produced Chief S.L Akintola as a fall guy that the north used to checkmate Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1963 general elections that snowballed into street brawls called operation weetiee, the personality of Nyesome Wike in today’s political calculations fits the bill of another imagery of S.L Akintola’s playbook but this time by a Southern President against a Northern political boulevard in a political battle of ‘be all and end all’ in 2027.
Nyesom Wike is a good reader of political games but Iike President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Wike should learn how to return to the roundtable for dialogue, armistice, amnesty, détente, consensus, consideration, compromises.
Any application of force or the wrong use of judicial process to handle Rivers State politics may result in very risky political calculations that may put southern Nigeria at the short end of the stick.
No matter how much maligned, Nyesom Wike may have become, he is a huge political asset to any group that has him in their fold, because to him, the end justifies the means and he does not shirk from known foes but ever ready to confront them headlong.
Nyesom Wike is responding to bruises inflicted on him by his his known friends but shouldn’t allow his disappointments turn to irretrievable mistakes.
Let Nyesom Wike seek peace and pursue it after showing great strength in political mastery in the game of turbulent power acquisition.
God bless Nigeria.
