Last year, months before the presidential elections, I wrote an article about Wike, Feeding the beasts of election wins’, pointing out how he goes and can go from strength to strength in furtherance of his ambitions.
“Like most outgoing governors, Wike picked his successor, Siminialayi Fubara and, if 2019 gubernatorial elections in Rivers is anything to go by, will enthrone him in March 2023. Installing someone he presumes to be loyal and controllable; Rivers will become his base from which he will continue to influence elections across the country in furtherance of his presidential ambition. This is the Tinubu model with Lagos; the same model Kwankwaso is struggling to implement in Kano.”
Over the last 6 weeks, Wike’s smooth riding plans have been disrupted with several road bumps. When the friendly fire between Governor Fubara and Wike burst into the news at the end of October the main casualty was the Rivers State Assembly building which was set on fire. This week, the building was bulldozed to the ground and 27 Rivers state legislators who had crossed from the Governor’s PDP to the President’s APC looked set to extend the accidental victims list. The destruction of the building, on the grounds that it is unsafe post the fire, is Fubara’s way of ensuring the 27 legislators, allegedly controlled by Wike, cannot sit and impeach him. By crossing over from PDP to APC, though their seats are forfeit and should be declared vacant pursuant to Section 109 of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution which states that a member of House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if ‘being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected’. There is an exception – where the party the member was previously a member of is unable to function or has been split etc. Arguably, PDP is split nationally and with the trouble between the former and current governor, it is likely PDP in Rivers is split. The Speaker of Rivers Assembly gleefully declared the 27 seats vacant, (apparently 2 have crawled back to PDP) and, our courts have jumped in with an injunction to prevent INEC from holding elections to replace them. wonderful that the wheels of justice move quickly when they want to.
Standoff
It is likely that over the last couple of weeks, Wike’s access to River’s state’s public funds has been tightened or restricted. This has to hurt – one cannot dispense favours or be powerful without money. Along with legislators taking sides, commissioners in Fubara’s cabinet, mostly appointed by Wike, also resigned.
Enter the ‘resolution’. On Monday December 18, Nigerians got a 2-page document with signatures under some decrees which on the face of it seek to return things to the status quo ante before the fire was lit at the Rivers Assembly. It rings hollow and unbalanced – legislators should be ‘allowed’ to return and get their allowances (no mention of returning to PDP), commissioners – who presumably resigned out of their own free will – should be reappointed and the state budget which has been passed into law should be resubmitted to the state assembly. Notable voices have pointed out the unconstitutionality of these orders but the Constitution has not been protected by a serving president for quite a while – this is why precedents and consistency matter. Already there are allegations that the document was not the result of any measured or heated negotiation but a ‘take it or leave it’ which Fubara will probably take to buy himself some time and peace but it will be temporary.
At the heart of these troubles, is what it takes to win presidential elections in Nigeria and the calculations to stay relevant between election cycles.
Premium Times and the BBC both concluded from their review of the 2023 election results of Rivers State that Wike stole the Labour party candidate’s win for Tinubu. It was the only thing that guaranteed him the bargaining chip he needed to become a member of the Tinubu cabinet from where, amongst other things, he can continue to be relevant at dispending political favours. Not for him the Tinubu model of holding Lagos and staying in Lagos. Wike needs the apparatus of state from which to continue to operate. That he planned for near total control of Rivers State from installing the governor, most of the state cabinet and members of the house of assembly was not power enough, or maybe he was hedging his bets against revolt in the Rivers’ State government house paradise he created.
But how many votes did Wike deliver to APC for the presidential election and is it worth it to keep him on side for 2027 or is there something observers are missing? With all the messiness and illegality, APC scraped 231,591 votes in Rivers for the 2023 presidential election while Oyo delivered 449,884 and even Benue where Ortom, a member of the Aso Ebi 5 governors led by Wike was vocal about his discomfort with the same faith presidential ticket presented by APC, delivered 310,468 votes for APC. Rivers had the 4th highest number of registered voters (3.6M) after Lagos (7.1M), Kano (6M) and Kaduna (4.4M) and General Buhari won in 2015 and 2019 without Rivers…so what exactly is worth the President’s further erosion of his weak reputation for integrity and doing more damage to principles of rule of law and constitutionality?
Rivers is hardly the bastion of good governance despite decades dedicated to brainwashing Nigerians that good roads (such as they are) and cement dependent projects are ‘development’ and a sign of effective governance. As of 2022, BudgIT reports that while Rivers met a few laudable milestones in terms of increasing internally generated revenue particularly from tax collection (the Lagos model again), its ease of doing business ranked 11th and it was doing quite poorly for attracting investment (17th out of the 36 states). Health spending per capital was N1,607, for education it was better at N8,360 but Rivers has huge operating budget of N117bn of which 79 percent is for personnel costs, a fancy way of saying salaries and benefits.
Asides the distraction from governance that this situation imposes on the governor, elected officials and public servants there is also the waste of public funds with the destruction of the rivers assembly and what it will cost to build and house the legislators in the interim. Surely all this cannot be in aid purely of political calculations for 2027?
How long will and can this continue?
Wike is a man with a record of saying one thing quite emphatically and doing the opposite as such few hold his verbosity as any indication of fact– but he has said he will not contest the presidency in 2027 against Tinubu. So what is the Wike plan? To hold on to Rivers and a cabinet seat in Abuja until 3031 where if zoning and the current parties survive, it would be the ‘turn’ of the north and position himself as a vice president? With his tireless, tiresome antecedents and his relationship with power would anyone without an unhealthy ambition be eager to have him as a close ally? Only time will tell but it is safe to wager that the people of Rivers and Nigeria will not be winning anything anytime soon with this crop of politicians.
