‘Port Harcourt No Be Abuja’

Rivers State, Wike’s state of origin and Abuja, where Wike is the first Southerner to be appointed FCT minister in 47 years, are two different political arenas. While in Rivers he was the undisputed mayor with limitless, seemingly absolute, power, Abuja presents a different kind of challenge: for one, being a Christian, southern, leader of a Muslim-dominated northern city puts him in a precarious position. The first sign of the predictable ethno-religious push-back against his leadership has already emerged. During a sermon on 19 October 2023, Ahmad Gumi, a prominent Islamic cleric, asked President Tinubu to remove Wike as FCT minister describing him as a devilish man under whose leadership ‘Abuja will now become an extension of Tel Aviv and when they see anyone with a beard like us, they will say it is Bin Laden and we will be killed.’ On the same day, Wike had to make public clarification that he had no plan to demolish the Abuja national mosque in response to rumours. For the next three years, his leadership in Abuja is hinged on the proverbial gunpowder that could set off a chain of (un)expected explosions stoked by ethno-religious sentiments.

Close observation of Nigeria’s political landscape especially ahead of the 2023 general election showed that Wike’s stock had risen. If his plan from a year before had worked, Wike would have been in Abuja three months earlier, and sworn in on May 29 not as a minister but as the president of Nigeria. His loss to former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primary election stalled his ambition for the country’s highest political seat.

Wike’s journey to becoming the first southerner to be appointed FCT minister in 47 years is a testament to his being a ‘strong man’ in Nigerian political parlance (a role that has more often been occupied by northern Muslims such as Mohammed Musa Bello who served from 2015 to 2023 and Nasir El-Rufai who served in the same role from 2003 to 2007). Thus, it seems there may be extra scrutiny as Wike tries to navigate the role of the de facto governor of Abuja at a period when Nigeria is coming out of a bitter ethnically charged election. Wike, however, is not new to being in the eye of the storm—this we know from his eight-year term as governor of Rivers, during which he ruled the state with an iron fist; to his current political quagmire, where despite being a leading PDP member, he accepted to serve in—after having worked for the success of—his party’s main rival, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

How Wike performs in the next three years as minister of the FCT may go on to define not only his political survival but also the future leadership of Nigeria’s seat of power. To grasp how this future will be play out, you need to understand where Wike is coming from.

When Nigeria returned to democratic governance in 1999, a new crop of politicians joined the mix of the old ones, many of whom had participated in the failed 1993 transition. For example, Atiku was a presidential aspirant in 1993 before winning the Adamawa governorship election in 1998 but was chosen as vice president by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Tinubu was elected as a senator in 1992 before being elected governor in 1999. In Wike’s case, he was among the politicians whose political journey began in 1999 when he was elected executive chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area, two years after he was called to bar. He was re-elected in 2003 spending another four years in office. His term as a local government chairman cemented his knowledge of the electorate and allowed him to grow his grassroots politics. When in 2007 he was appointed as chief of staff by Governor Rotimi Amaechi, Wike had transformed from a lowly political neophyte to a fledging leader. According to columnist, Chigachi Eke, in 2015:

To ease out Wike from Rivers where Wike’s political support was steadily growing due to his grassroots popularity, in 2011, Governor Amaechi presented Wike to President Goodluck Jonathan and Wike was appointed minister of state for education before being promoted to federal minister of education in September 2013. While Abuja has a way of alienating politicians from their base, weakening the ties they once had with the grassroots, Wike did not lose touch with Rivers. Instead, he returned to mount a political battle against Amaechi, a move that would change his political trajectory in Rivers State.

Ahead of the 2015 general election, Amaechi was one of seven PDP governors who had defected to APC and, despite being newly formed, APC looked set to wrestle power from PDP whose supporters had boasted would rule Nigeria for 60 years. While several governors and lawmakers were jumping ship to APC, Wike stayed put in PDP determined to slug it out with Amaechi for political control of the oil-rich state.

The elections in Rivers were among the most violent in 2015. While at the federal level, the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan, was happy to concede defeat reiterating that his ambition was not worth the blood of Nigerians, in Rivers, it was a battle that claimed the lives of people. With 97 people reportedly killed in Rivers during the election period, the state recorded the most pre-election violence,. Ultimately, Wike was elected the governor, signaling the beginning of his political dynasty.

2015 ushered in the decline of PDP, which lost the presidential seat and was relegated to the opposition. After 2015, PDP also had fewer governors and lawmakers than APC. Amid this context, Wike found an opportunity to take charge of a struggling, sinking and polarized PDP that was not used to being in the opposition. In Wike’s case, he had come out victorious in an acrimonious political fight between him and Amaechi. Wike had won not only the election but also the respect of other politicians. Thus, he began almost immediately to spread his political tentacles beyond Rivers. Having lost out at the federal level, PDP was not in the financial position to sustain itself as a strong opposition and Wike, with the financial war chest of Rivers, became a sort of sole financier of the party. Thus, it came as no surprise that when the party converged for its 2017 national convention, Wike’s man, Uche Secondus, emerged as chairman of the party in an election critics within the party described as a charade.

Having won the first hurdle, Wike went to work ahead of PDP’s presidential primary election set for 2018. Wike insisted that PDP’s primary election should be held in Rivers and warned that he would teach any presidential aspirant who wanted the primary election held elsewhere a lesson. During a consultative visit by Ibrahim Dankwambo, one of the presidential aspirants, in Port Harcourt, Wike said:

Although the primary election was ultimately held in Rivers, Wike’s anointed candidate, Governor Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, lost the PDP presidential ticket to Atiku. For Wike, it was a temporary setback, akin to losing the battle but winning the war. He had gotten his way with the party leadership through the election of Secondus as chairman; more so, getting the convention done in his state further cemented his authority in the party.

The 2019 election cycle went the same way as 2015’s. PDP lost the general election with Atiku losing to APC’s Buhari in the presidential election, while Wike won his re-election bid in Rivers. This time, Wike adopted a strong vocal opposition against APC while cementing his grassroots base and further showing who was in charge. He allegedly bought N3.4 billion worth of luxury cars for judges and politicians in Rivers in 2020, which drew criticism but the purchase helped him to continue to win support in the state. He lashed out at traditional rulers in Rivers, whom he accused of supporting oil bunkering and threatened to withdraw their staff of office. His ubiquitous music band followed him around singing his praise providing comic musical interludes whenever he spoke at functions. Wike was an entertainer, but he was tactful about it, using his humour to draw attention to himself as he became the main character in his party’s uninteresting movie. When he spoke, which was usually in pidgin English, the unofficial language of ordinary people, he was usually direct, so everyone knew who was his friend or foe at each given time. He called for a state of emergency to be declared in Benue State over insecurity as a dig at the then-governor, Samuel Ortom, in 2017. He described Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State as a serial betrayer who ‘was a tenant in the PDP’. According to the columnist, Dele Sobowale, ‘…[Wike] was the loudest antagonist of the Buhari government; he campaigned hardest against southern marginalization; he went to court on account of Value Added Tax.’