Wike is staking a claim for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. After making history as the single individual who has served in five different executive positions since the dawn of democracy in 1999, he wants to be seen as the first politician to “amalgamate” two parties in support of the president’s reelection. But the people of Rivers State have seen through him, he’s in for a bumpy ride henceforth.
One of the most intriguing volumes of poetry written by the globally respected poet, scholar, essayist and dramatist, Niyi Osundare is titled The Word Is An Egg. At the last count, Osundare had published nearly 20 collections of verse, establishing himself as one of the world’s most formidable and most notable bards of all time. I have been a career researcher into Osundare’s oeuvre in the past four decades and I am also inspired in my writing career as a member of the generation immediately succeeding his. I have also been most fascinated by The Word Is An Egg, which derives from the intricate depths of Yoruba lore. It establishes a congruence between the reality of the irretrievability of the spoken word, and the unsalvageability of a broken raw egg, once both have left the confines of their various enclosures. At that point, they become unguardable and unstoppable tumbling boulders.
Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, the “batman” of Rivers State politics, is famous for his affliction by logorrhoea. He is perennially obsessed with both the microphone and the lectern. At the height of his endless attrition with his political godson and successor as Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, Wike in August 2024, threatened to “put fire in the states of governors supporting Fubara” against him. Wike spoke in reaction to a solidarity message by the Forum of Governors of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), which met in Jalingo, Taraba State at the time, to the troubled Fubara.
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Wike who lost the presidential ticket of the PDP to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar at the May 2022 primary and was overlooked as running mate ahead of the 25 February, 2023 presidential election, has been on a singular mission to “put fire” in the PDP ever since. Apart from working against the party to secure a foothold in the post-election governance structure of the opposing All Progressives Congress (APC), Wike has superintended over the decapitation and interment of the party which brought him to political prominence 27 years ago. From a hitherto virile and robust opposition party of over a dozen governors, the PDP has shrunken to just about half that number, its offices at the local government, state and national levels under lock in most places, arising from litigations and counter-rulings.
In recent weeks, however, Wike’s invocation of fire on the house under whose roof he grew into adulthood, has transmogrified into self-immolation. And he has been told so in unmistakable terms by those on whose behalf he incinerated his father’s house. Following the defection of Siminalayi Fubara to the APC and his official designation as leader of the party in the state, Wike suffered an initial bout of insomnia. For the avoidance of doubt, the APC National Chairman, Yilwatda Nentawe, a professor, said in the immediate aftermath of Fubara’s switch to the APC, that he is henceforth the party’s Numero Uno in the state. He admonished him to demonstrate accommodating leadership and earn popular trust to win the gubernatorial primary, which will presage his return to office.
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Wike, who postures as the sole proprietor and indisputable emperor of Rivers State, promptly countered by saying Fubara will not be returned to Brick House, Port Harcourt, the original name of Government House in the Rivers State capital, under his watch, come 2027. According to Wike, he will not allow the state “to repeat the mistake of 2023” – the emergence of a non-pliable Fubara being the error under reference. Ajibola Bashiru, an academic, rugged activist and National Secretary of the APC, buttressed the position of the party chairman when he noted subsequently that even members of the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC must defer to sitting governors as party leaders in their various states. A perennially paranoid Wike shot back, cautioning Bashiru to steer clear of the politics of Rivers State, warning him not to get his hands “burnt.” Wike is obviously totally enamoured with the concept of infernos and conflagration as it were. But he got more than he bargained for from Bashiru, an erstwhile senator.
Bashiru told Wike unequivocally that the last time he, Bashiru, checked, Wike was a member of the PDP and not the APC. To that extent, Wike could not be a rottweiler and alsatian at the same time, guarding two separate gate houses! In Yoruba, Bashiru would probably have told Wike the proverb about the fact that gluttony is not tolerated in the homestead of Alade, a folkloric figure who availed farmers and country folk refuge beneath the roof of his thatched hut during the rain, and something to snack on. Bashiru further told Wike that if he is so psychotic about the politics of Rivers State, he could well resign his job as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) and relocate to full time local politicking in Rivers State! Bashiru cannot be any correct. At no time since the return of democracy in 1999 has the FCT been any dirtier and unsafe as it has been in recent months under Wike’s supervision, as he continues to distract himself with the concurrent political overlordship of Rivers State.
In parts of the capital city, it’s been several months since garbage was last evacuated, a situation which bears very grave epidemic prospects. Wike who prides himself as the best thing that ever happened to the FCT, has not been able to rout bovinae and similar animals from the streets and thoroughfares of Abuja in over two years of riding around the FCT in obscene motorcades, complete with outriders. Criminals are having a field day abducting unsuspecting residents in places and sending innocents to untimely deaths. All of these, while Wike trades with the politics of Rivers State. Most surpringly, Wike’s tongue, which characteristically engages before rigorous rumination, has not found an answer to Bashiru’s pungent tirade, especially the bit about quitting his ministerial job, to assume the full, functional role of Amanyanabo of Rivers State politics. It would seem Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s “Overtake Don Overtake Overtake” (ODOO) is at play in the current uneasy ceasefire.
Wike may attempt to make light of his situation next time he mounts the campaign dais on his self-serving “thank you tour” of Rivers State. He may display and dramatise buffoonery in the name of attempting to work his motley audience. Beneath Wike’s regalia, however, is a man traumatised by the burns and blisters of self-immolation on his torso. As it stands today, Wike has no political “house.” He has since “put fire” on his “paternal family house,” the PDP, the rubbles still smouldering in the dry season wind. This PDP made Wike two-term council chairman; chief of staff; minister of state and two-term governor. The critical core of the opposition, led by Atiku Abubakar who long saw through his chicanery and shenanigans, have since energised the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
For his award-winning success as the ultimate undertaker of the PDP, Wike is very largely viewed with suspicion and resentment in the ruling party, much as he construes himself as one of the “star boys” of the incumbent administration. He cuts the image of a controversial, divisive, disruptive, even destructive jobber in the eyes of the APC. He is unguarded in his utterances and was quoted to have once said he invested a whopping “₦50 billion in the installation of President Bola Tinubu in 2023 and will not be dumped just like that.” Tinubu was effusive in his adulation of Wike as one of the standout performers in his government in the congratulatory message he sent to him last December. Wike is ever present at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on Tinubu’s travels and returns, his genuflections non-typical of the political tigritude he professes.
Wike is staking a claim for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. After making history as the single individual who has served in five different executive positions since the dawn of democracy in 1999, he wants to be seen as the first politician to “amalgamate” two parties in support of the president’s reelection. But the people of Rivers State have seen through him, he’s in for a bumpy ride henceforth. Wike is severely loathed by his people for appropriating the political capital of Rivers State for his personal aggrandisement. He gave himself away recently when he said the reelection of Siminalayi Fubara will culminate in his political extinction in Rivers State. Simply put, the state has been Wike’s article of trade on the nation’s political stock market. And he has been the sole collector of accruing dividends, bonuses and royalties.
Whether Wike will field an aspirant to upstage Fubara in the APC gubernatorial primary when it is eventually scheduled, will yet be seen. Whether he will be sponsoring a candidate on the “rainbow political movement” he claims to have just established in Rivers State, to run against Fubara in the governorship election of March 2027, in the event that Fubara gets the APC ticket, will be some spectacle. Wike’s principal, Tinubu, whose reelection he claims to be prioritising, will also be running on the APC superstructure. Indeed, the platform on which Wike will hawk his wares in the run up to 2027, for a man who has set himself up for systematic self-destruct, is yet to be seen. Hopefully, Wike’s several foibles on his political trajectory will remind him in a sober moment that the “word,” is very truly as fragile as the egg.
Tunde Olusunle a Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors (FANA) teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja.
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