Wike’s path to perdition

Former governor of Rivers State and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, is  an aggressive person, always exhibiting hostile behaviour in his relationships with others. At every point, he wants to dominate, harm or violate others’ rights without any iota of regard for their feelings.

But it is worse now. Today, he is lashing out at anyone who dares to advise him on the need for civility in the public space. In the last one month since his successor, Siminalayi Fubara, defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Wike has been barking unconscionably.

On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, Fubara, who seems to have mastered the art of political survival in the face of unrelenting brickbats thrown at him by Wike, announced his defection. That came a day after he visited President Bola Tinubu at his lair – State House, Abuja.

The significant thing that happened during the meeting that lasted for about 45 minutes was the fact that Wike, who had become a monitoring spirit of sort, was not invited. So, only the president and Fubara know what they discussed.

Speaking at the stakeholders’ meeting, the governor said: “We can’t support President (Tinubu) if we don’t fully identify with him… So we have taken that decision here today that everyone who has followed and suffered with me, the decision this evening is that we are moving to the APC.”

He chose his words – everyone who has followed and suffered with me – carefully. It was a masterstroke in two significant ways. First, APC automatically makes governors party leaders in their states. Second, there is an unwritten understanding which gives APC governors automatic return tickets except for those that have fallen out of favour with the president.

So, by joining APC with those who followed and suffered with him on the terms he personally agreed with Tinubu, Fubara dramatically undercut Wike. The FCT minister knows he has been dealt a political uppercut. That is why he is barking angrily. In PDP, Fubara was a political orphan, literally, the reason Wike could easily run rings round him. Not anymore. He is now President Tinubu’s beloved political godson. And nothing must happen to him.

So, it is Wike, utterly frustrated by Fubara’s deft political move, that is vowing to stop his re-election in 2027. That sounds rather preposterous. In the first place, Fubara has not declared any interest in running for the governorship again in 2027. Even if he does, that will be on the APC platform. Wike is not a member of the APC. So, how will he stop the party from giving the governor who has found favour with the president, the national leader of the party, the ticket?

But as Robert F. Kennedy once noted: “A hopeless man is a very desperate and dangerous man, almost a dead man.” Wike is reading the handwriting on the wall and the augury is getting very stark. He has become very desperate and reckless – a bull in a China shop. That is why he is behaving like the proverbial nwa nza bird that overfed itself and challenged its personal god (Chi) to a wrestling match. By attacking Fubara who has made peace with Tinubu, Wike is throwing a challenge to the president.

He has relocated to Rivers State on a so-called “thank you visit.” At Ahoada West LGA, he insisted that the mistake of 2023 will not be repeated, vowing that not even Tinubu can stop him. At Okrika, he crowed magisterially: “We will not make the mistake we made last time. We are here to correct that mistake” regardless of the cost. Then when the APC National Secretary, Ajibola Basiru, tackled the party’s Vice Chairman (South-South), Chief Victor Giadom, for calling Fubara a ‘so-called governor,’ Wike jumped in.

If the FCT minister was wise, he should have known that Basiru’s defence of Fubara was an indication that the governor was no longer the political orphan he used to be in PDP. He now has the machinery of the APC behind him. But consumed by infantile hubris, he thundered in Oyigbo: “Let me warn those who come to Rivers State, because you have heard that we have N600 billion, you come here, you collect, and you open your mouth to talk anyhow. I say it here, take this message to your National Secretary, leave Rivers State alone… Don’t take our support for Mr President for granted. You have to be careful with statements you make.”

To be sure, Rivers State is not Wike’s private estate. And it can never be. It is good that APC chieftains are vigorously pushing back. While the APC scribe pointedly told him that his support for Tinubu does not automatically make him a member of the APC, he warned that his attempt to destabilise the party in Rivers State will not be tolerated.

Prominent APC stakeholders have also issued a stern warning to him. “As a serving minister, Nyesom Wike has a responsibility to exercise restraint, decorum and respect for the institutions of government and the ruling party,” the stakeholders said. “We remind him that he is not a member of the APC. He therefore has no privilege or mandate to interfere in the internal affairs of the party or harass its officers.” APC governors are up in arms with him, just like their PDP counterparts. Not many people, if they have their way, would want to associate with him in any shape or manner.

Ultimately, Wike will lose because he is fighting a “war of blame.” Fubara has not wronged him in any way. What the governor has asked for is the freehand to govern the state to the best of his ability. That, to Wike, is an affront to his supremacist and megalomania.

But Fubara is not rattled. That is why he is watching Wike’s barking with amusement. Truth remains that despite all his noisemaking, Wike is nothing without the political support of Tinubu. If he thinks otherwise, he should resign his appointment as minister and face his obsession with Rivers politics as he has been advised and see how far he can go.

Wike is a man to be pitied. Unfortunately, he does not seem to appreciate the fact that with Fubara now in APC, he no longer holds the aces. He is so blinded by arrogance that he didn’t notice when the political ground shifted. And that is the beginning of his precipitous fall.

In his fight with Fubara, he is the villain, not victim and one thing I have learned in life, to borrow an axiom, is that “the guilty dog barks first” and no one plays the victim better than the one who caused the damage.

Yet, let no one be fooled. This loud barking is a show of weakness, not strength. As Norman Reedus, an American actor, once noted: “The dogs with the loudest bark are the ones that are most afraid.” People who are overly loud, aggressive, or threatening often do so because they are actually insecure or fearful. That is why Wike has become pathetic and desperate.

In my July 4, 2024 piece titled, “Nyesom Wike, the ugly face of Nigeria’s ‘democracy,” I said of him: “The Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, is a cantankerous old fossil – irascible, quarrelsome and testy. Whether as a local government chairman, chief of staff, minister or governor, he is bad-tempered, cranky and grouchy; a man not only at war with himself but perpetually with others. Such behaviour is totally unbecoming of a leader.”

Nothing has changed. And nothing will change. His is a path to perdition and when it happens, he will have only himself and his insatiable greed for power to blame.

•Written By Ikechukwu Amaechi