Every generation has a knack for throwing up men like Nyesom Wike. Without him, we will yawn and yearn like disappointed moviegoers. He has all the ingredients of a movie star. He can make you laugh, smile, gripe, curse, keel over your seat in either praise or rage. He at once can play comedian and Doctor Death. When he makes you laugh, you will take an inventory of your ribs after the quake. When he drives you into temper, you will clasp your blood pressure monitor. You want to hug and choke him at the same time.
When you want to watch a video clip, you are tempted to get a glass of beer or fruit wine and a doughnut. It is entertainment without charges. But then, you know the man is not joking, and that is why he tickles some and taunts others. He is not like a few comedians we have had in the past. Not like the man in Benue, who lay down on the floor in supine veneration. Not like acts like Fayose and his neck brace. Not like the fellow who fainted over money charges in the national assembly. Not like Barkin Zuwo’s appropriation of government house for government money. Those were one-and-ashy moments. The episodes popped and expired. Samuel Ortom might have competed but his act looks opportunistic and corny. Hence, he would rather befriend the master than be one. Recently, Ortom turned spiritual over Wike on Atiku and retreated into a holy of holies before coming out for air.
We had men like K.O. Mbadiwe, but even he was more for effect than substance. He had no executive power, no brawn on street and boardroom. Other than that, K.O. was Ok. Wike is a quintessence of humour and action, and a lot more.
We are seeing that now in his PDP and Atiku Abubakar. The man is not happy but somehow he finds a way to amuse. And annoy. Even his silence was like a thriller after the man complained of unrequited love at the PDP primary. Many wanted to hear more. And see more. He said nothing. He did silence. Nothing, happened. Nothing became substance. The theatre moved from the actor to the audience. It was not the Rivers State governor who took over the stage. It was a blend of what the German playwright Bertolt Brecht called alienation effect and Ola Rotimi’s concept of theatre as religious ecstasy or Aristotelian catharsis. But no ecstasy came, and the alienation was not even clear-cut. It was his foes and allies playing and saying. Wike was angry. Wike was leaving the party. Wike was in Honolulu. Wike was already working with the APC.
Then we saw the man materialise at the Port Harcourt airport, and the egg broke. He was trim. Not the Wike of old who combined big girth with big tongue. He looked healthy and earthy, his goggle dark with omen, his gait straight and rhythmic. He had a roughneck dignity, at once a fighter and peacemaker, being something of each. Then he spoke. His scratchy voice and defiant mien emphasised the sobriety of the hour.
He lashed out, and Atiku became a butt of his fury. We knew that all was not well with the PDP because all was not well with Wike. We now saw that it was a duel of brothers. Atiku had granted an interview in which he implied that Wike could not deliver. That he preferred Okowa, who bludgeoned over N200 billion from a moronic state house of assembly without a debate. The same man who is leaving the state without an enduring legacy other than few roads of no consequential power for quality of life in the state. The man whose party members are running because fire is gutting the rooftops. The same who asked his men to abandon a gentlemen’s pact that the president must come from the south. He played quisling to his region for a mess of vice-presidential porridge.
Atiku did not know how to speak. He dented the man rather than amend. He did not help matters when he said later that his party would win without Wike. Yet at last, they broke the ice. Both men met. Breaking the ice does not mean the parts of the ice will melt. If the temperature is still low, the men will still live with glaciers in their hearts.
Some say Wike was acting out of self-interest. Others say he was acting out of principle. There is always self-interest in principle and principle in self-interest. The matter is sometimes reduced to fighting egos. That is possible. But Wike has given the party conditions. One big sore thumb may be the resignation of Iyorchia Ayu as chairman, a man who has always been fired from any job he had since he was senate president. Is he about to be fired as a septuagenarian? But Wike also complained that the party was too north heavy, including its Board of Trustees. One would wonder how a party that cannot keep a pact with itself keep a pact with a nation. It was that lack of faith that led Atiku to win the party slot against its zoning policy. Atiku has always been a man seeking the sweet pie anywhere he sniffs it.
Wike also was part angry because he was the southern Christian candidate close enough to win. He blamed Sokoto State Governor Aminu Tambuwal less than his southern colleagues who made it possible for Tambuwal to give the decisive vote. As political historians from Taciturn to Gibbons have shown, the outsider cannot get you if the insider does not pave the way. In his The Prince, Machiavelli said the outside powers invade and thrive because insiders sell out.
The Christian Association of Nigeria did not see their hypocrisy when they fought for a Christian Vice president from the north in the APC when Wike, as a southern Christian for President, was rigged out by his fellow southern Christian delegates. They wanted to be the bottom instead of the top unlike Moses’ prophetic injunction in the book of Deuteronomy. CAN should spend more time reading the Bible and inspiring their folks to holiness than touching the unclean thing.
The party must make peace with Wike. If they say it is his personal ambition, he has a right to it and a right to fume for being abandoned at his opportune hour. That is where principle meets interests. Don’t forget that many benefitted from him, and they used to call PDP Wike Inc. He was aware of this when he dismissed Tantalus-chasing Edo PDP chieftains as “tax collectors.”
It is time not for tuneless bray at the man. They should, in the words of Greek playwright Euripides in his play Alcestis make him a herdsman in their pastures, “piping to your flocks over the sloping hills tunes to stir their hearts to wedlock.” However, I don’t see any wedlock in the offing. I see more of the defiance of the wedlock of the gods, apology to playwright Zulu Sofola. The best scenario is odd propriety of a cold war, an air of adversarial politeness. Novelist Sembene Ousmane calls it “the perfidy of words and the hypocrisy of rivals. Wike has dared them by asking the BOS of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu and Tambuwal’s foe, Aliyu Wammako to inaugurate projects in his state. It is a grudge match.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation.
