Of all the accusations and allegations against ebullient Rivers State Governor, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike in his unending frays with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) nobody has dared infer that Wike is humble. He will very likely to take an offence at being garbed in so belittling an attire.
Humility is an attribute not to be associated with Wike. He abhors it. He lets it known that his variegated politics centres on dissonance, something he claims as his forte.
Wike in addition is bitter, bold, brash, brutish, bullish, traits that make him talk to people a little bit below condescendingly. He believes everything has to be said importantly as he decides and where he decides. His timing is more devastating than his utterances.
Raging, ranging, rattling, relentless, reckless, are some ways people see the pushy Wike who appears mostly comical when making his strongest points. He simply does not care.
Wike runs on an assumed timelessness of his importance to humanity, and immediately to PDP whose leadership has kept genuflecting around him. Anything that draws crowds of recognition to him helps his case about PDP reconciling with Wike. How long will this rigmarole last?
A reconciliation is impossible unless Wike comes to terms with his own dispensability. He could forget sometimes that he is human and if the community takes a decision on him his notches of relevance could disappear.
The terms of a reconciliation with Wike will continue to shift because what he wants is unavailable. He must have realised that hence the recline to repetition of his rejection at the primaries was the party’s judgment on the unimportance of Rivers State.
Are we to take Wike serious when he thinks he is Rivers State? What are the issues about Wike that affect Rivers State? People are wiser than he thinks. He inflates his ego by claims that he will take Rivers votes wherever he wants. Those are hints that he can cause unfair elections in Rivers. He should find out what Rivers people who he boasts with their votes hold for him.
Wike’s threats to the PDP should have long been ignored except that his financial biceps never fail to get attention. He still has more to spend.
He appears infuriated by absence of willing takers for his offer of public sharing of confidences on the primaries. The cliche “dancing naked in the market square” finds fullest expression in how Wike approaches issues. That he has not staged an indecorous dance on the matter could be that he is bidding his time for a stage big enough to take his displays.
Wike doesn’t mind saying his mind. Consequences are side considerations in the things he says. He also maximises opportunities to extract the greatest returns on his investments. His presence is everywhere he invests.
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When he single-handedly financed, saved, and returned PDP to stability in 2019, he wanted an immediate result in the audacious plot to have his friend Aminu Tambuwal as the presidential candidate of the party.
Concessions Wike then got were Port Harcourt as venue of the convention, the right to fund the convention, and the unmet expectation that Tambuwal would be PDP’s presidential candidate. It was not certain if Wike would have gambled the gold mine the governorship of Rivers State presented for Tambuwal’s running mate.
Wike stormed out of the convention grounds when Atiku Abubakar was leading. He did not support the party’s 2019 presidential campaign.
Shouts of betrayal rent the air. Wike’s sense of entitlement commenced thence and his angst over his unacknowledged fatherhood of the modern PDP never abated. He wanted Tambuwal and he couldn’t understand why with all the money he reportedly spent.
If Wike were a masquerade, he would have to beat tunes for his dances knowing that nobody would tolerate his bulling. He alone knows what he wants. He would not notice if spectators deserted the square for him.
Wike expends his gritting, croaky voice campaigning as if he is unaware that the primaries had ended. Tambuwal who he supported in 2019 chose Atiku over Wike. He cannot live down the betrayal, the most painful being that his money – some annoyingly insist it is Rivers State money – has failed to buy PDP.
Another surprise to him is why people took his money and denied him the ticket. He was cocksure that the ticket was his. Tambuwal would have possibly been his running mate.
Does Wike want a re-run of the primaries? Does he want refund of his expenses for the primaries?
Whose vice presidential candidate could Wike have been?
Imagine he wanted to be President. Later he pitched himself as a better Atiku running mate than Governor Ifeanyi Okowa. How would Wike have fitted in that ticket?
Now that 2023 political doldrum dawns on him, his frustration permeates all his utterances. He has become more garrulous. His romances with the rival All Progressives Congress, APC, are the final flaps on his fantasy flight to no destination.
When some claim money cannot buy everything, others counter that it can if you know where to shop. Wike has enough money to continue shopping for what money cannot buy. Good luck to him.
