Wike the Political Nostradamus of PDP

By:
Bamidele Atoyebi

Love him or hate him, he is very effective in whatever role he chooses to play, and you ignore him at your own Peril.

He fights for convictions and rights as if without them, he loses the essence of his existence.

Ezebunwo Nyesom Wike doesn’t choose venues for his battles, so that if you think taking altercations to the gutters will scare him because of his dress sense, then you have to think again because he fears no more and will accompany contest with gutteral invectives.

Wike has ever left indelible marks wherever his feet has thread upon,.right from his days as Chairman in Obio/Akpo local government where the fear of his edicts formed the beginning of wisdom.

He popularised the christening of unbending rules as Obiakpo and it has stuck to this day.

As Chief of Staff, he was so unyielding that his detractors waited for him at the popular garrison junction better known then for its traffic snarls and pumped high velocity bullets into his jeep but he came out unscathed.

Asked then how he survived if he was inside the car only elicited cold stares. This man neither retreats nor surrenders once the peace loses steam.

He is apparently an Apostle of late President Winston Churchill who insisted that “once hostilities break out, moderation amounts to idiocy”, so he spares no bullets and takes no prisoners once the first salvo sounds.

It is worth noting that Wike has the bragging rights of being about the only politician of note who never dumped the party unlike his contenders who have been hopping from one party to the other and contesting elections under the platforms.

It is a truism that governors of any political party are main financiers of the party, so when PDP was hit with defections and governors switched allegiances, Wike was the only tree of the party in those days of the locust, he kept the party, nurtured and funded it until those who went on hijira returned.

So Wike can without any fear of contradiction, say he is the most steadfast in the PDP.

When Prior to the convention to pick the presidential candidate of the PDP for the 2023 elections he kicked over the zoning of the National Chairmanship position to the North while the presidential candidate of the party was being contested by someone from the same zone.

Wike first did a mild protest before he activated his well lubricated machinery.

He made it clear that he was fighting for equity and would neither blink nor slack till what was due to Southern Nigeria was given.

He insisted that the unwritten code of peace in PDP on power sharing was that if the Presidency goes north, the Chairmanship goes south and would not brook the two positions going to the same zone as it will tilt both equity and fairness in Favour of one zone.

He further threw his hat into the ring and contested. Once defeated in his own backyard and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar chosen, his battle cry became giving the South its due which he warned would be achieved by fair or foul means.

From then, he deployed his resources and accompanied it with bold strategies and the PDP started convulsing.

It was then that it became public that he had been the single highest financier of the party and when he pulled his cards, the party became a shadow of itself.

Then came the controversy of who will be vice president to Atiku, which though he denied interest, words were noised that he was schemed out and working from the outside, he formed his Group of five PDP Governors simply known as the G5.

They were Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State, Samuel Ortom of Benue State, Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and himself as their leader.

Their battle cry was equity and they met in different states of the country as well as different cities of the world.

They made it clear that unless justice was done, their loyalty to the party would no longer be total.

The PDP entered the contest as a divided house and the effect was devastating.

The party which had held power for 16 unbroken years lost their quest to snatch back power from the opposition. Worse still, the party became a shadow of itself.

The funniest aspect of the battle was that Wike remained very vocal and had responses for anyone that dared speak against his team and campaign for equity.

It was then it became clear how he bankrolled the party and assisted most of the party candidates into victory, silencing everyone on his path.

Being an astute political strategist he invested where the power lay and called the shots unmistakably.

He had a hand in who became what, dumping any officer who showed any sign of betrayal.

The Party Chairman’s seat became a musical chair while the office of the national secretary also became a contestable point.

However, he won all the battles as his candidates ended up either through the courts or contest, won their positions.

The justification of Wike came after every warrior in the party had done flexing both financial and connection muscles which left the umbrella of the PDP in tatters.

Not used to playing lost games, he pitched his tent with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who won and made him the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory where his penchant for keeping to rules and extreme performance has driven development.

Keeping to rules of payment of due rents or levies in the FCT has since become the beginning of wisdom or have your property at risk.

The long and short of Wike’s clear sight of the future manifested when the party after wallowing in delusionary grabbing of the wind through disregard of the party Guidelines and laws, returned to his advocacy of fair division of offices between the north and south.

This stickler to rules has escaped touted disciplinary traps of the party because as a lawyer and adroit politician, he painfully doesn’t bend rules, so they have come back in 2025, angling for 2027 to zone Presidency of the party to the South and given Chairmanship to the north, a move that had when ignored and twisted, blew the party into near oblivion.That was a stark justification of his advocacy.

Next time Wike talks, you either listen to him or have your path obliterated because his forte is ability to predict trends as a stickler to fairness and justice.

Bamidele Atoyebi is the Convenor of BAT Ideological Group, National Coordinator of Accountability and Policy monitoring and a publisher at Unfiltered and Mining Reporting.