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By Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
History is a patient teacher. However, it does not forgive those who refuse to sit in class. Every empire that believed itself to be permanent, from Rome to the Ottomans to apartheid South Africa, fell not just to external enemies, but to the arrogance of men at the top who mistook the applause of a season for the loyalty of a lifetime. This seems to be exactly where Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, has confined himself. He seems hell-bent on relearning this lesson the hard way.
In recent days, Wike’s so-called Rainbow Coalition, which is a cross-party project he has positioned as a strategic vehicle for President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election, has collided head-on with the two most consequential blocs of subnational power in the country. These are the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), chaired by the taciturn Imo State Governor, Senator Hope Uzodimma, and, by extension, the wider fraternity of state governors who have resolved that APC governors will not support or endorse candidates outside the party ahead of the 2027 elections.
Uzodimma made the declaration on behalf of the governors during a closed-door meeting at the Imo State Governor’s Lodge in Abuja. The governors did not stop at rhetoric but moved ahead to pledge to take charge of Tinubu’s re-election campaign across their respective states. The governors’ position hurt Wike deeply. It deflated him, bruised his ego and made him look so ordinary and of no significant importance in the race for Tinubu’s re-election. That decision was a direct and coordinated rebuke of Wike’s supposed invincibility. It was delivered with precision by the very men whose state machinery, structures, and grassroots loyalty will actually decide whether Tinubu returns to power. Wike is not a factor in that decision.
The presence of the Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, who is also the chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF), a forum that represents the collective institutional weight of all thirty-six governors, at the meeting, deepened Wike’s pain. For Wike, it was a signal that his coalition was meaningless to the collective aspirations of the governors. This is so because Wike’s position suggests an irony of self-importance. He is a minister not a state governor. The implication is that he holds his office at the benevolence of the President who he has put in a fix to pick between a federal appointee, an aide, and the men who control the levers of power in the states. Tinubu is certainly wiser.
What Wike has done is pick a fight with the governors, one of whom he was before 2023. His time as governor exposed him to the enormous powers of state governors. And he used it to bloat his ego after failing woefully in the presidential run and vice-presidential run in the 2023 general elections. He ought to know the implications of the powers of governors with regard to controlling the electoral machinery of their states, including local government structures, the party structure and leadership, the traditional rulers and other layers of political structure of the state whose endorsements move votes, including civil servants who staff polling units. In essence, while Wike commands attention from Abuja, the governors command state terrains. And in Nigeria’s brand of politics, the terrain wins.
Wike’s decision to enter into a fight against the governors is a misadventure. It will come crashing like a pack of torn cards arranged by a heavily drunk. Looking back, Nigeria’s political history is littered with strongmen who believed their closeness to a president, their command of a media cycle, or their reputation for combativeness made them untouchable. Wike pretends not to be aware of this even when he makes comments suggesting that the President sits in office because of his (Wike) prowess. Perhaps that drives his arrogance and nauseating public conduct.
Wike took a swipe at Uzodimma. He accused the Imo governor of sponsoring political attacks and insisting his coalition “has nothing to do” with the APC, and visibly threatens the party’s unity. In making the accusation, Wike walked a familiar path. He has, since becoming Minister in 2023, accused almost every politician in Nigeria of one form of treachery against him or the other. In all these, he never found himself wanting for any wrongdoing. He has remained a candidate for canonisation while every other politician that has had something to do with him was the Satan.
Speaking on an Arise TV interview from Spain, in his signature froggy voice, Wike spoke the language of a man who has convinced himself that self-belief is the same thing as strategic advantage. He expressed concern over the Rainbow Coalition’s impending implosion and insisted that his support is only for Tinubu’s 2027 re-election and that he never promised the PDP would not field its own candidates in governorship, National Assembly, and State Assembly elections. In other words, his coalition would vote Tinubu for president but PDP for the other offices. This is clearly the signature of a man trying to have every side of an argument at once. He pleads loyalty to Tinubu but will not be accountable to Tinubu’s party structure. That is treachery too!
This is the sort of arrogance that history punishes. Every fallen strongman believed his indispensability was permanent. Every cornered emperor believed the legions loved him more than they loved stability. What Wike appears not to grasp, and refuses to accept, is that political capital is not a personal possession. It is borrowed. It is also conditional. It answers to institutions and alliances that can sustain the call. Wike ought to know that the PGF is not a social club where liquid substances of 60% alcoholic volume are regularly downed alongside marinated jackals. No, it is the combined weight of 31 sitting APC governors, most of whom are on the ballot for re-election, and others seeking election to the Senate. These governors are not willing to sacrifice their electoral pursuits to entertain Wike’s narcissism. Wike ought also to recall that when rumours circulated that Uzodimma might be replaced as PGF chairman, 18 APC governors moved swiftly to pass a vote of confidence in him, and reaffirmed their support for his leadership. That was a manifest public demonstration that the forum, despite its internal frictions, closes ranks when challenged from outside. Wike is now that outside challenge.
As a politician, Wike rides on audacity, mistakes an early win for permanent ordained status, and now picks a fight with the very structures that could have been his allies rather than his obstacles. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and believed the Senate would simply absorb the shock. Napoleon marched into Russia certain that momentum alone would carry him through winter. Closer to home, Nigeria has watched governors, ministers, and godfathers alike discover, often in a single election cycle, that the political grassroots they assumed was theirs by right had quietly reorganised itself elsewhere. Power in Nigeria is never static. It is a coalition that must be renewed, courted, and respected daily. Wike’s posture suggests that he believes otherwise. He believes that his combativeness alone is a substitute for the patient work of consensus-building among 36 state chief executives whose cooperation Tinubu’s re-election machine actually requires.
Besides, Wike’s fight poses a genuine strategic risk to the very re-election project he claims to champion. The Rainbow Coalition has been described as a potential threat to the survival and cohesion of the APC, with critics alleging that its internal structure was designed to weaken the party by creating parallel political structures and supporting opposition candidates against recognised APC nominees. If that critique makes sense, then Wike is not securing Tinubu’s second term but jeopardising it, while insisting that he alone understands how to deliver it. That is not loyalty to Tinubu but self-conceit marketed as strategy.
Empires, including political, corporate, and personal, rise on the energy of bold men and fall on the arrogance of those same men refusing to believe the ground beneath them can shift. Wike has built a career out of the conviction that he does not need permission to act. That conviction served him when he was fighting for relevance after his misadventure in the 2023 general election. It may be the very thing that unbuttons him now that relevance requires cooperation, not conquest. Fact is, history has seen this movie before, and it rarely ends with the empire intact.
