By Segun Ayobolu
To his surge of supporters, former governor of Rivers State and now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Mr Nyesome Wike, has transformed into the status of deity. He is the object of their unending adulation and ululation. Among them, he is fast becoming the man who cannot be corrected because he is above mere mortals and thus can do no wrong. Alas! Wike knows more than anyone else the sheer ephemeral nature not just of power but of life itself. A leader who wants to succeed must beware of listening to the deceptive music of sycophants who desire nothing but to lure him to the cesspit of demystification and destruction. This is a factor that the incumbent governor of River State, Siminalai Fubara should also habitually keep in mind and meditate upon daily.
On the other side, those who fervently support Governor Fubara detest his predecessor, Wike, with unmitigated passion and undisguised hatred. They do not see anything wrong with the governor turning so vehemently and venousmally against a mentor who not only sold his candidacy to the voting public but mobilized and deployed massive resources to ensure a little-known Fubara’s victory at the polls. Now that Fubara is in the governor’s seat, he has laid bare his fangs and set his claws like a feral beast waiting to pounce on any available prey. But it is a matter of moral integrity, character, loyalty and fidelity to truth. Of course, it can be argued that it was God who made Fubara governor of Rivers State. True, but God uses human beings to achieve his purposes on earth and in the case of Fubara, God’s tool was Wike and the governor must never forget that.
It is difficult to understand how a man like Fubara who was a trusted aide to Wike and worked with him for eight years as governor, could so suddenly turn against a man who made him politically and helped build the political structure that enabled his victory to become Rivers State governor. Could he have been deceptive all along, hating his boss with all his might but disguising his true feelings in order to achieve his political objective? If so, Fubara should be Intelligent and wise enough to know that no matter which political party he gravitates towards in due course, he will not be trusted. His integrity will always be questioned as well as capacity for loyalty either to any person or group. Wike as it is now turning out to be, has little capacity to spot, recruit and motivate people of talent and ability to aid him add value to governance when he was governor of Rivers State.
But then, despite his political astuteness and acumen, how could Wike have decided for and massively enhanced resources behind a Fubara who was his candidate for the governorship office in Rivers State? It is now obvious that if Fubara had any iota of loyalty to his then-boss, Wike, or any sense of commitment to the principles of truth and honesty, they were deceptive and only skin deep. But many of the Rivers State respected elders swarming around Fubara, singing his praises and denouncing Wike today are most likely to harbour some doubts within them about the character, constancy and dependability of Fubara.
The lesson here is that rather than one person picking a candidate and imposing such an aspirant on the party, structured and institutionalized mechanisms must be put in place across parties to facilitate the emergence of candidates for elections in a competitive, transparent and credible process. But this also implies further that there must be a fundamental change in the way our political parties are funded and run. Rather than the current system whereby wealthy political entrepreneur’s fund and thus dominate the political parties, we should return to a new model where party members pay their dues through which the parties’ activities and obligations are funded.
Both Wike and Fubara have their respective faults in the ongoing political crisis but the governor in my view has the greatest responsibility to bend over backwards to cultivate his mentor and former boss. It is certainly not too late. Moreover, it is the well-being and progress of the people of Rivers State that must be paramount. The speed with which he moved against and sought to decapitate Wike politically is amazing and creates the impression of a ‘Machiavellian’ for whom the end justifies the means no matter how base or immoral. But a lesson of history is that adopting a Machiavellian disposition to life can often be counterproductive or outrightly self-destructive.
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It was not until he stormed the venue of the PDP presidential election convention and very nearly got the ticket but for the ethnic sleight of hand that gave Alhaji Atiku Abubakar the PDP presidential flag, that I began to take a serious view of Wike. If Atiku had picked him as his running mate, would that not have brightened his chances in the last presidential election? Well, that question lies in the bosom of time.
Wike is energetic, focused and productive. Both as governor of Rivers State and now Minister of the FCT, even WIKE’s most ardent adversaries would admit that he is a star performer and an aggressive goal-getter. But his failure with regard to the Rivers crisis is his penchant for intervening unnecessarily in the administration of Rivers under Fubara. Many see him as too brusque, harsh, dictatorial and overbearing. Even as it is important to let Wike know the need to curb these traits, his shortcomings cannot be an excuse for what is widely believed as Fubura’s betrayal of his former boss.
The Scenario in Rivers is no exception. We have continued to witness ceaseless confrontations between governors and their successors since the inception of this dispensation in 1999 and across party lines. And in most cases, it is due to a struggle between former governors who seek to play the role of party leaders in their respective states and newly elected governors who seek to assume control of the party structure and assume the leadership of the party in the state. It was this conflict between the leadership of the party and that of the government machinery that led to the breaking down of the relationship between Chief Obafemi Awolowo as Leader of the party and Chief SLA as Premier of Western Nigeria that later degenerated into widespread riots and demonstrations in the region and later led the country to civil war with excruciating implications for millions of people on both sides of the battleground. And it was to avoid such a situation to recur in future that in the Second Republic from 1979, Awolowo insisted that the governor in each state controlled by the Unity Party of Nigeria must also be the leader of the party in the state.
How he walks the tightrope of being a Minister on the platform of the APC and also a still influential member of the PDP is intriguing and impressive. But we can only wait in bated breath as events unfold in the near future. President Tinubu tried in futility to reconcile the warring factions. Their mutually agreed positions were soon jettisoned and the contenders were back in the trenches. It is surely time for elders in Rivers State to close ranks and help bring these two eminent citizens of the state together.
Meanwhile, we will continue to closely watch Wike’s intriguing dance steps on the often treacherous terrain of Nigerian politics.
Culled from The Nation
