Has Wike’s Juju Expired? By Ugoji Egbujo

For years, Nyesom Wike seemed untouchable, wielding power with impunity and bending institutions to his will. He could come on national TV ‘barking’.  He could wear crazy colored clothes. He could hold more media chats than the president and all governors combined to gossip about his mentors, who had all become his enemies 

As a junior minister, he hounded his former governor—Rotimi Amaechi—who had played a key role in his rise. In 2015, when the Court of Appeal nullified elections across Rivers State, only the governorship survived to the Supreme Court. Shockingly, the apex court upheld Wike’s victory despite widespread allegations of grave irregularities.

As Rivers  governor, he dominated the PDP in the country, changing party chairmen like handkerchiefs and rendering his rivals politically impotent with his cunningness,  ruthlessness and deep pockets.

When Buhari’s DSS attempted to arrest judges suspected of corruption—including Justice Liman—Governor Wike physically obstructed them, acting as a judicial bouncer. There was nobody he couldn’t dare and go unscathed. 

The low and the mighty  bore the brunt of his arbitrariness. During the  COVID epidemic , he whimsically demolished two huge private  buildings in the name of enforcement. All the time , he had state resources at his disposal, donating  funds freely to genuine and  curious causes.  Fellow governors trailed him like chicks behind a hen, calling themselves the G5, holding meetings in Milan and London, to discuss the empowerment of the poor . 

Elections in Rivers state under Wike always attracted local and international attention . They became case studies in rigging, with rivals barely allowed to campaign. When he failed to secure the PDP’s presidential or vice-presidential ticket in 2023, he rebelled, finding spurious moral justification to sabotage his own party. 

Once he became  FCT Minister under Tinubu, he seemed intoxicated by his luck . He lobbied to loosen the grip of TSA on the City’s purse. He borrowed massively and descended on the residents to mop up  ground rents . Wike’s political genius is surplus cash. Soon allegations  of land grabbing filled the city . Yet no scandal stuck . The president was unperturbed.  Meanwhile Wike tightened the leash on his  successor, Siminalayi Fubara, who went from being his  stooge to his footstool. As he did , the  president showered encomiums on him, perhaps impressed by his ability to sabotage opposition using moles, courts, and sheer audacity. The opposition blamed him for dismantling parties like the PDP, which ruled Nigeria for 16 years and catapulted Wike  from hustler to billionaire governor and minister.

But it appears  the great Wike is now unraveling. The presidency appears fed up with the stench of his overreach. Daniel Bwala, Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy Communication, all but declared the president tired of Wike’s antics in Rivers. Dismissing claims that any such open rebuke would be ingratitude, Bwala insisted Tinubu had “adequately compensated” Wike for his contributions to the 2023 victory. Some interpret this as Tinubu viewing Wike as a moral stain or a circus clown who mistakes applause for affection. Not sure Tinubu still bothers about morality.  Others suggest Tinubu, a political  god himself, cannot tolerate a deputy  deity in his orbit.

Bwala’s reaffirmation that Fubara is the leader of the APC in Rivers State, unrefuted by the presidency, carries far-reaching consequences. Is Wike, the loquacious masquerade once assumed to be a spirit, now  being undressed in the market square? Perhaps  Tinubu, like all  gods, is a jealous being,  doesn’t  brook deputy gods.

Perhaps it began with  Yerima. That afternoon, that failure of a frantic Wike to get the military authorities to withdraw Yerima was telling. It damaged a portion of the myth. The garrulous minister was forced to put back his phone into his pocket , release a volley of face-saving  obscenities, tuck in his tail and slink into his car, defeated in public. The riverine sango couldn’t summon his thunder. 

After Yerima, came Senator Ajibola Basiru, the secretary of the ruling party. After labeling Wike a political chameleon , he asked Wike to resign from the cabinet because he had become an albatross around Tinubu’s neck . That public denigration of Wike by the ruling  party’s national secretary must have felt like a stab. Rattled and shame-faced, Wike issued a reckless notice  which many felt was drafted for Tinubu, warning that his support for the president should not be taken for granted . Now the presidency has responded . 

This stance of the presidency may  likely end Wike’s impeachment gambit against Fubara. A process instigated by a godfather, meant as leverage for negotiations or dominance, to rein in a godson has been undermined by another godfather? With procedural hurdles, court adjournments, and presidential backing for Fubara, that card has effectively backfired. How then  can Wike reclaim lordship over his stooge? Has he bitten off more than he could chew? His political structure faces collapse if Tinubu elevates Fubara—Wike himself once called such a fate “political death.” 

Many call him the “coordinator of the judiciary.” Others call him POS Africa.  Politicians with court cases consult him. Not because he is a life member of the Body of Benchers. Umahi blamed him for what he called his  court-orchestrated removal from office. A former CJN called him a “child of the bench.” As governor and minister, he pampered judges with luxury homes and cars in the name of judicial independence—while neglecting workers’ welfare. Some say his juju is the judiciary , others say it’s cash. How can he get out of this present mess?

Wike may be  a bundle of contradictions. He may approximate the summary of  hypocrisy and unscrupulous opportunism. But he has survived because he understands that  men are driven by ambition and money. And in Nigeria even the men who cant be bought can be groomed to owe gratitude. Insiders say his political  strategy is to put people on a payroll  even before he needs them. They say his governing principle is ‘What money cannot solve, more money can’. He is a poacher.  As governor , while strangling Rivers APC and dragging Buhari through the mud, Osinbajo—harboring unseen presidential ambitions—dubbed him “Mr. Project.” In 2019, when Wike appeared to be  losing his  re-election, INEC halted result announcements after five LGAs and ordered a recount—rumored at Abba Kyari’s behest. He has repeatedly turned adversity into advantage through subterfuge. But has this Amalinze finally been cornered? 

His options are limited: Downgrade his ravenous appetite and trim his  bloated ambition, and negotiate power-sharing with Fubara, claiming submission to the sovereign wishes Tinubu  and pleas of  peacemakers . This buys time to regroup.

Disappear quietly to Europe, like Diezani, to enjoy his accumulated  dividends of democracy.

Whatever he chooses he must disband his band. They have outlived their usefulness.  He should consider keeping his son off the soapbox. The idea of another Wike coming so soon to continue from where his father stopped will infuriate the masses .  Then he must hide the  Rolls-Royce. People are hungry and angry.  It’s not a good idea to fling sybaritism into their faces 

Whatever path he chooses, interesting days lie ahead. The myth of invincibility has cracked; the masquerade’s thunder is fading. In Nigerian politics, no juju lasts forever. But he who fights and runs away might live to fight another day . 

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