There are many who accuse Wike of being conceited. They point to how pleased he is with using the instrumentality of intimidation and bullying to cower frightened politicians within and outside the PDP and struts as if he’s the only pebble on the beach. But while conceit may puff a man like Wike up, it would never prop him up for long.
By Tiko Okoye
To give the man his due, Wike, just like one of his predecessors – Peter Odili in late-2006/early-2007 – has been traversing the length and breadth of this country in a bid to garner key endorsements and gain momentum. But why then would a man like Wike who has invested time, money and other valuable resources in his quest to secure the PDP presidential ticket begin to drop hints now and again that he might forego his ambition? Equally confounding is his sudden willingness and readiness “to obey whatever decision the PDP makes on the presidential ticket.” Don’t you begin to terribly smell something fishy? I do!
Do you really believe Wike when he bellows that “what’s important is the good of the party” and that “being a very gentle and honest man, every situation doesn’t need to benefit me”? Ha! Are we now suddenly being presented with “Wike the meek and supplicant” – a man who has meticulously built his political brand image on the veritable pillar of non-complaisance? Do you believe him? I don’t!
Isn’t this the same Wike who threatened to single-handedly destroy the party on television talk shows and press interviews, if the 2018 nominating convention was taken away from Port Harcourt, just when it appeared serious thought was being given to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s suggestion that the convention be conducted anywhere else but the Garden City given Wike’s proven conflict of interest?
You may recall that Wike didn’t hide his aspiration to be a running mate to one of the aspirants for the party’s presidential ticket, Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal. And being fully assured that Wike wasn’t just making an empty threat, the convention stayed in his city just as he demanded!
Isn’t it this same Wike who authoritatively declared that the PDP cannot simultaneously contain himself as a governor and his estranged political godson, Prince Uche Secondus, as the national chairman? It was either Secondus was booted out with immediate effect and automatic alacrity (apologies to late Gen. Murtala Mohammed) or he (Wike) would display his ‘true colours’ and prove the vengeance he’s quite capable of wreaking on the PDP and all those he deemed to have betrayed him on the matter. And before you could shout “Power to the People,” the Board of Trustees and National Executive Committee summoned an emergency meeting where the decision was taken to submissively comply with Wike’s demand!
And now, Wike is trying to pass himself off as a servile partyman who is so gentle that he can’t even hurt a fly talk more a human being like his estranged political godfather Rotimi Amaechi. Wonders will never end! Talk of a Saul-to-Paul miraculous transformation. But this is political humbug and you shouldn’t stress yourself as the leopard can never change its spots, no matter how hard it wants to or tries.
No pun intended, but it is said that in order to catch a thief one must think like a thief. In trying to search for credible answers I put myself in Wike’s shoes – via an analytical process of using mirrors in a metaphorical periscope to zero in on the substance rather than the form.
READ ALSO: 2022 APC convention of confidence and conceit
Soludo’s inauguration slapastrophe
Could Wike be one of the characters English novelist George Eliot (pen name of MaryAnn Evans) described in her book, Middlemarch, who “are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them”? The fear of Wike, without doubt, has become the beginning of wisdom for a vast majority of PDP aficionados.
But this reality is a two-edged sword. It works best when Wike remains content with being a kingmaker. But alarm bells start clanging all the way from Warri to Sokoto when neurotic demons of vaunting ambition and self-survival push him to make a beeline for the presidential crown.
There are many who accuse Wike of being conceited. They point to how pleased he is with using the instrumentality of intimidation and bullying to cower frightened politicians within and outside the PDP and struts as if he’s the only pebble on the beach. But while conceit may puff a man like Wike up, it would never prop him up for long.
I’m fully persuaded that Wike somehow obtained advance information that Amaechi was on the cusp of announcing his intention to vie for the APC presidential ticket. Just imagine how hot Rivers State would become for a Wike stripped of his teflon immunity with an all-powerful President Amaechi in Aso Villa. “He that has gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion,” averred English cleric and writer Charles Caleb Colton, “will not feel himself quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.”
That being the case, Wike is left with a Hobbesian choice: to very carefully hedge his bets. The kernel of the matter is that Wike has arrived at the conclusion that a bird in the hand is truly worth two or more in the bush. He must’ve taken the immortal advice of Bertolt Brecht to heart: “It isn’t important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.” The odds of becoming the vice president on the wings of being a running mate to a Northern presidential aspirant with the highest probability of winning are much shorter than going out on a limb as presidential candidate in his own capacity.
This can be the only reason for Wike to run in the daytime with fellow Southerners in the PDP and nicodemusly market himself as the most beautiful bride to Northern suitors. For him, procuring the relevance and immunity necessary to prevent him from suffering untold harm in the hands of mortal enemies, such as Amaechi, is Job No.1.
You might have recently noticed that while still saying (no longer ‘demanding’) that the PDP should (no longer ‘must’) zone its presidential ticket to the South (without any threats either), he has chosen to tone down his bellicosity and don the toga of a “very gentle personality” who’s willing to abide by any decision the party (just who constitutes “the party”?) makes on zoning as everything doesn’t have to focus on his personal interest alone.
It is also said that the great majority of men grow up and grow old in seeming and following. But not Wike, who has clearly demonstrated that even if he isn’t born a boss man, he has deliberately gone out his way to become a grandmaster of the game. But is it just a game to Wike? In introspection and retrospection, it is very difficult to say whether his bellicosity and daredevilry outspokenness emanate from his head as manifestations of a game of fame and glory based on a carefully calibrated political strategy, or if they emanate from his heart or DNA.
Determining the foregoing jigsaw puzzle is essential in the light of the poignant postulation of French novelist and poet Anatole France (a pseudonym): “The heart errs (just) like the head; its errors are not any less fatal, and we have more trouble getting free of them because of their sweetness.” Therein lies the real tragicomic streak in the unfolding Wike’s Hyde-and-Jekyll simulation.
