Rivers by-election: Wike runs with the hare

 

No one is ignorant of the great political straddle constantly conjured by former Rivers State governor and now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister, Nyesom Wike. Frustrated by former vice president Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 poll, Mr Wike switched allegiance partially to the All Progressives Congress (APC) and fully to President Bola Tinubu who was at the time also a candidate. 

It may be difficult to gauge Mr Wike’s loyalty, or the purity of what he exudes, but no one has questioned his commitment to the president years after he reached an understanding with him. 

The snag, however, is that he has not forsaken his party, the PDP, and does not plan to. How to balance the weight of the two parties on a thin fulcrum has thus engaged Mr Wike, the president, the two contending parties, and the rest of the country for years.

In last August’s local government polls, when the fate of the PDP was yet to be decided between contending forces, Mr Wike ensured that the APC, which is not his party, won 20 out of 23 Rivers State local governments. Before then, the House of Assembly had suffered identity crisis, torn between worshipping God on the one hand or Baal and Ashtoreth on the other hand. Satisfied that the candidates for the LG polls owed their loyalty to him than to a party, and anxious not to empower his enemies in the PDP which he was not to fully take over until nearly 10 months later, the FCT minister sprung his straddle once more and made the APC happy and boisterous. Nearly a year later, he also made the PDP win the Rivers South senatorial by-election held on June 20, with Olaka Johnson Nwogu, his man, defeating the APC’s Osarokaka Ebenezar Erewari by 46,961 votes to 1,647 votes. There was indeed no contest. The straddle had won again, and neither the losing APC nor the victorious PDP whimpered or exulted.

Mr Wike, who should now be properly and fittingly called Nigeria’s straddler-in-chief, is perhaps the first and only living or dead politician capable of enacting such blatant straddle. And he is bold with it, unencumbered by any ethical reservations or the grimaces on his detractors’ faces. In what amounted to a sop to the president, and being a smart politician himself, Mr Wike quietly engineered probably one of the greatest straddles ever in Nigeria by making the president’s APC to win five LGs in the February Federal Capital Territory (FCT) local government elections. 

His own PDP took one LG. Just like the president who understands what structural and systematic politics mean, Mr Wike, in a mere three years or less, has put Abuja in his firm grips and Rivers State in implacable embrace. He makes his straddle real and plausible because he worked for it, earning the reputation of Mr Project in Rivers and confirming and even doubling that reputation in Abuja where he has transformed the city to the point of completely disarming the opposition.

Some analysts still believe that the 2027 general election is a three-horse race. It is hard to imagine more than one visible horse left. The APC has 31 states and hundreds of LGs on total lockdown, complete with elected officials fanatical about guarding their reputation and protecting their turfs. They will brook no defeat and entertain no compromises in the forthcoming elections, and they have the structure, money, and all resources at their disposal to deliver favourable outcomes. 

Therefore, the possibility of losing is, to them, anathema. Mr Wike understands this phenomenon perfectly well. More, he understands that the English who coined the idiom, ‘running with the hare and hunting with the hounds’, knew that certain situations arose in life that forced a straddle. 

The former Rivers governor is, therefore, unlikely to straddle when circumstances, including his ambition, dictate otherwise. He won’t do it outside Abuja or Rivers, nor will the president imitate him. But hate him or like him, he has made running with the hare a delightful, if a little shameless, pastime. Since it makes him win and happy, he will, therefore, continue to luxuriate in it.