The Nyesom Wike That History Cannot Ignore

By Bemgba Iortyom

All the introduction he will ever need anywhere in Nigeria today is his name – Nyesom Wike. Nothing more than that. He is easily in the bracket of the five most visible political leaders in the country currently. With President Bola Tinubu on top of it, Wike is in there with the Peter Obis, the Atiku Abubakars and who else…

Former Minister, former Governor of Rivers State, currently Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, one who is moving mountains in administrative performance, transforming the landscape of the FCT in ways previously unimagined. He has it so much in terms of status attainment.

But even all of those combined is not what ticks his name on any roll. So what does?

Some say it is the controversy he embraces and cosorts with anytime, wherever. They may be right. The FCT Minister does not flinch from controversy, sometimes it appears he willingly courts it. His ever readiness to face the camera and tape recorder, and always so on the frontfoot, fuels the notion of his amity with controversy.

To some he is the benevolent leader under whose ambience flourishes a legion of proteges. They say he is forthright, blunt and rarely suffers fools gladly. The drive for excellence is a torchlight at all times in his hand guiding both his private and public endeavours. So to be with him and under him, you must be up and doing, possessing of the knack for delivering results, not excuses.

So many verdicts about the man, Nyesom Wike, all of them within the reach of the claws of debate, for and against. His foes and supporters alike may trade arguments for the remainder of his lifetime on earth, and even well beyond it as to who he is and who he isn’t. And both sides will be entitled to their accolades and pebbles, as the case may be.

There is, however, a part of his lifetime which history has annexed to its annals and placed in secure standing, while he yet lives: that is his role in the preservation of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during a most critical phase of the party’s existence to this day.

In 2015, after sixteen uninterrupted years of wielding control over the reins of federal power, since 1999, PDP found itself in the unfamiliar station of an opposition party. So unfamiliar was the party’s new status that how to settle down into it presented a bit of a challenge. Those who naturally should have taken the responsibility of leadership of the party on their shoulders were nowhere to be found.

The first president of the country on the PDP platform, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had not only distanced himself from the party, but had openly torn the card ascribing to him its membership and renounced same membership.

Chief Obasanjo’s Vice, Alhaji Atiku Abubakara, had since exiting office in 2007, left the party and returned to it and left again a number of times, all in an intense quest to be President of Nigeria. In 2015 particularly, he had vied for the presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) where he lost to Muhammadu Buhari at the party’s presidential primary. Buhari had eventually won the Presidency against PDP’s Goodluck Jonathan, with Atiku arguing vehemently through his spokesperson, Paul Ibe, in ThisDay Newspaper that ; “Atiku before, during and after the presidential election contributed his time, energy, resources, ideas and counsel to the success of the ruling party (APC) at the 2015 presidential election.”

Immediate Past President, Goodluck Jonathan, himself had retired to Otuoke after an election outcome that was the very first in the history of Nigeria, and one among very few on the African continent, where an incumbent had lost power at the polls and willingly handed over. Jonathan was obviously undergoing recovery and couldn’t be relied on for the leadership needed to galvanise and navigate PDP into action as the main opposition bloc against the ruling APC. Neither did Jonathan’s Vice, Arch. Namadi Sambo, look in any shape for such a Herculean role, having quietly retreated to his Kaduna base.

The lot, therefore, fell to the 13 state governors produced by PDP at the 2015 polls, among them Nyesom Wike in Rivers State. It is plausible to fathom that Wike may have set out to rally his colleagues to the task of filling the vacuum and providing leadership for the party at the national level. Eventually he emerged as the arrowhead of that leadership-of-necessity.

I was elected as Benue State Publicity of the PDP in 2016, a position in which I served for 8 years. Also serving during that period as National Chairman of the Forum of PDP State Publicity Secretaries, I was close enough to certain quarters to have been privy to the role Wike played in giving bold and critical direction to the affairs of the party. Of epic proportions in the series of events during the first phase of APC reign was what came to be known as the Sheriff saga.

When dispute erupted at the 2016 National Convention of the PDP in Port-Harcourt, with Caretaker National Chairman of the party, former Governor of Borno State, Ali Mohdu Sheriff, insisting on clinging to power, it presented a ready opportunity for the ruling APC to cash in and exploit the impasse which ensued therefrom. It was an opportunity to undermine its main challenger too tempting to be resisted by a ruling APC which inner circle comprised some ex military rednecks, and a President himself a retired General. With Sheriff himself a willing tool, the knife was put to the neck of the PDP. It may be immodest to ascribe the eventual survival of the party to the efforts of Wike, yet it won’t be out of place to acknowledge the centrality to that survival of his steadfastness in rallying and leading a determined campaign to save the soul of the party both in the political trenches and in the law courts.

And it was the courts which eventually saved PDP from the guillotine where APC, through Ali Mohdu Sheriff, had dragged it for decapitation.

As a party Executive and delegate to the National Conventions and some national assignments, I was privy to Wike’s pivotal role in bringing into place leadership structures of the party post Sheriff. The Uche Secondus led National Working Committee had the imprint on Wike, not only in influencing its emergence, but in sponsoring the running of the National Secretariat after its emergence. If disagreements came afterwards between him and National Chairman Secondus, it still wouldn’t blight his contributions to sustaining the party to that point of the disagreement.

The situation was not any different with the emergence of Dr. Iyorchia Ayu as the successor to Uche Secondus. The details are undisputable as to the role Wike played in the emergence of Dr. Ayu and the National Working Committee under him, as well as their subsequent take-off. Facts which may for now be inappropriate to divulge through this medium detail the horse trading and eventual agreements reached by various parties, mostly seeking a problem-free Presidential primary of the party from which it could successfully challenge for the 2023 Presidency.

A fact which has never been disputed by anyone to this day, including the most hard-nosed of Wike’s critics, is that Wike had required just one commitment of Dr. Ayu as condition for his giving him his support, and that was a promise to “provide a level playing field for the presidential primary of the PDP for the 2023 elections”. The former Rivers State Governor is said to have pledged that if he were defeated at a free and fair primary, he would accept the outcome in good faith and commit to the quest of the party for victory at the 2023 presidential election.

Dr. Ayu is said to have committed to this agreement, but later reneged on it after emerging as National Chairman. He is also known to have placed clogs in the path of mending of fences after the presidential primary which he skewed in favour of his friend, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who had once more returned to the party in continuation of his eternal presidential quest. Ayu’s hailing of then Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, as the “Hero of the Convention” was to rub salt into the wound of defeat inflicted on Wike by the combination of Atiku and Tambuwal. The National Chairman had also spurned all efforts at putting out the fire which his ensuing battles with Wike and the G-5 Governors had ignited in the PDP, eventually leading to defeat for the party at the 2023 polls.

To those who view Nyesom Wike today as a gadfly intent on usurpation of the fortunes of the PDP, they will do well to measure their views against the inalienable facts contained in the buildup to where the man stands today, and what justifies his actions. Are they consistent with what he has professed and stood for prior to now, on the general plane? When he says today that he is for a Southern Presidency of Nigeria for 8 years, is he being inconsistent with his earlier stand? When he reiterates his support for the Tinubu Presidency for a second term of 4 years, is he being out of tune with what he had adopted as his position after the betrayal by Dr. Iyorchia Ayu and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in 2023?

Those and many more are questions which answers to are already in the chronicles of history, never to be vitiated by neither sentiment nor emotion. For history and time are united on the mission of recording the activities of mankind, blindly and with the assurance of the sleepwalker, neither to be swayed from their path by revisionism or embellishments.

Chief Bemgba Iortyom Esq., contributes this piece from Abuja, Nigeria.