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Watch out! Wike is coming

Wike

Watch out! Wike is coming

By Admin
  • By Uche Ugboajah
    Nyesom Wike
    Governor Nyesom Wike

    I first heard of the name, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, sometime in 1999. Then, he was the

    dashing chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State. He had
    contested the local government election as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic
    Party (PDP) and had to reclaim his mandate through the court. A staunch believer in
    the rule of law and the efficacy of the judicial process, Wike has a rich history of
    engagements in this critical arena that under-girds society and anchors democracy.
    And he is a consummate lawyer to boot. Beyond the realm of law, it is noteworthy
    that Wike has remained faithful to the PDP, since its formation. Unlike many fair
    weather politicians in the country, he has not been swayed by the vicissitudes of
    partisan politics and its changing fortunes to leave the PDP. This uncommon trait
    speaks to consistency, principle and loyalty to his political party.
    Wike drew deeply on his grassroots mobilization skills when together with some
    friends they audaciously confronted the PDP apparatchiks in Abuja, in the matter of
    choosing their party gubernatorial candidate in their state – Rivers. For them, the
    important matter of who takes over from the amiable Peter Odili as governor of
    Rivers State, was a local matter that must be decided by Rivers PDP members, not by
    the commanding heights of the party in Abuja.
    8
    Thus they stood their ground and ensured their candidate, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi,
    then speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly won the primaries. This
    infuriated the former president and leader of the PDP, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
    President Obasanjo was to unilaterally annul the candidature of Amaechi, declaring
    his nomination as PDP candidate, as “having a k-leg”.
    But Wike, the nimble director of the campaigns for Rotimi Amaechi, and his group
    soldiered on, even after a fine gentleman, Celestine Omehia, was anointed as the PDP
    candidate for the election. Omehia won the election for the PDP but Wike and his
    group continued the battle again in the courts, a familiar terrain for him as a lawyer
    and democrat.
    According to reports, while the legal battle over who was the authentic candidate of
    the PDP in that 2007 election raged, Amaechi was out in Ghana for security reasons
    while Wike, the ‘field commander’, took charge of the home front not minding all the
    attendant risks, including threats to his own life. Such is the bravery, commitment and
    selflessness of Nyesom Wike!
    Wham, the Supreme Court declared Rotimi Amaechi as the rightful candidate of the
    PDP in the 2007 gubernatorial election and ordered that he be sworn in immediately
    as governor. Wike was subsequently appointed Chief of Staff. In his first term as
    governor, the fact which his enemies cannot even try to controvert is that Amaechi
    posted a superlative performance.
    Yet not a few would argue that the stability and the galvanization of interests, which
    Wike provided on the political fronts contributed immensely to that performance.
    Wike was to be appointed minister by President Goodluck Jonathan later.
  • analysts believed that appointment was a strategic plan by Amaechi to try and curtail
    the growing popularity of his former chief of staff at home by pushing him off to
    Abuja, since all politics as they say, is local.
    If that was Amaechi’s thinking, from hindsight, it was a monumentally flawed
    stratagem. Thus from Abuja, Wike launched out and even became more relevant in
    the local politics of Rivers State. To cut a long story short, Wike ended up as the
    governor who took over from Amaechi in spite of the latter’s best efforts to torpedo it.
    Interestingly, it is as governor of Rivers State that Wike has made his best mark so
    far. He has become a myriad of things to different people. For some, especially those
    at the federal government perch and people sympathetic to them, Nyesom Wike is just
    a rabble-rouser, a showboating individual or at best a power-drunk governor. Yet no
    matter how they despise him or how they struggle to diminish him, the people in
    Abuja know deeply inside them that Wike is no pushover.
    If they were to be honest, on a few occasions they had collided with the Wike force,
    like the proverbial tortoise, Abuja would readily admit that two strong men squared
    off on that ground. If there was one PDP state the ruling All Progressives Congress
    (APC) had decided to capture by any means, just before the 2019 general election, it
    was Rivers State. Their desperation to capture Rivers State was just not because of the
    oil wealth, but even more so, to tame the allegedly recalcitrant Wike.
    Oh, how they would have loved to see Wike beg them! But the hugely popular Wike
    fought like a lion and literally shamed his traducers. When the history of the Buhari
    government will be chronicled, the conduct of security agencies on the order of the
    government in the 2019 Rivers election perhaps will remain unrivalled in the chapter
    on abuse of power. Yet as in all good stories, good overcame evil and as in
    democracy, the majority won.
    More importantly, to his people Wike is not just a mere governor. He is their own
    governor they made with their own hands. And the man is going about doing justice
    to the confidence his people repose in him. While his haters are busy accusing him of
    mere braggadocio, Wike is busy transforming his state. He is confronting headlong
    the problem of insecurity, as a result of cult wars, which he inherited by cooperating
    with security agencies and whatever they would need to tackle the menace.
    Another governor may not have supported and assisted the police and the military the
    way Wike does because of their very obvious hostility towards him during the
    election. Yet for the Rivers State governor, the protection of lives and the property of
    his people is preeminent. On the side of infrastructure, Wike is awarding and
    executing contracts for road constructions everywhere in his state.
    For instance, on one occasion, he told a construction firm, “We have awarded you this
    contract and paid you in full to deliver this road in two years’ time. We paid you in
    this raining season, so we don’t want to hear that you cannot deliver because of the
    rains”. Such is his bluntness in pushing for performance. As he is constructing roads,
    he is rebuilding and equipping schools, hospitals and providing first class housing for
    judges and other categories of public servants in the state.

  • During the heat of the Covid-19 lockdown, Wike denied himself a lot to physically
    lead the enforcement of the laws made by the state assembly and even went into an
    altercation with the federal government in the bid to protect his people. Although he
    has been criticized in certain quarters, without Wike’s hands-on enforcement of the
    Covid-19 protocols, there could have been a disaster of cataclysmic proportion in his
    state seeing the carefree attitude of our people.
    For those interested in a robust inter-governmental relations, Wike is gradually selling
    himself as the rallying point for true federalism. Unlike many of his colleagues Wike
    fully understands that he represents an important tier of government and not
    answerable to Abuja. For this reason, he is clearly not one of the state governors
    afraid of speaking up for their people when the federal government bares its
    authoritarian fangs.
    As the governor poignantly put it in his remarks at Eric Osagie’s book presentation in
    Abuja, “I am not one of those governors who run around in Abuja. I don’t like to stay
    in Abuja. Once am through with my assignments I quickly return to Port Harcourt.
    That’s where those who voted for me are”. This independent disposition in pursuing
    the interest of his people who elected him has often put him in direct conflict with
    officials of the government at the centre.
    As a result, Wike is gradually becoming the symbol of resistance against an
    overbearing federal government in the Buhari era just as Ambrose Alli was in the
    Second Republic. Can you imagine that nearly after a month that the lives of young
    Igbo youths identified as IPOB members were wasted by security operatives in
    Enugu, no Southeast governor, not even Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, under whose nose this
    senseless blood-letting took place, has uttered any word. Wike will certainly not keep
    quiet!
    Finally for the PDP, Nyesom Wike appears to be its single most important asset now.
    While some of his colleague-governors are PDP by the day and APC at night just to
    be in the good book of President Buhari, Wike has remained unabashedly PDP at all
    times. He strongly believes that the political platform is still strong enough to win
    elections and that explains why he is doing everything possible to keep that party
    alive.
    From the massive loss in 2015, Wike has helped PDP to claw back at least three more
    states – Zamfara, Benue and Edo and suddenly PDP is becoming more attractive and
    formidable again. In the just concluded Edo election, Wike’s influence and hard-work
    added to other important factors to deliver the state to the PDP and remove the very
    last vestiges of APC in the South-south region. That is huge political victory for those
    who understand. “It was in this house, the campaign council met to work out the key
    strategies that led us to victory. You mobilized people across the country. You moved
    to Benin, went through the humiliation and attacks. You supported us and we won. It
    will be a sin against God if we do not come to say thank you. Even if the victory we
    are celebrating is from God. He has used people like you to make it happen”, a
    grateful Governor Obaseki told his host, Governor Nyesom Wike a few days ago in
    Port Harcourt.
  • Yes, sometimes Wike can appear to be brash and intimidating. Yet he has fought for
    this party with everything in him. And as 2023 beckons, PDP must do well to listen to
    Nyesom Wike when he expresses his opinion. He sure knows what he is talking
    about.
    * Ugboajah, a political scientist, wrote from ucheugboajah@gmail.com