Wike’s Politics of Gbas-Gbos, by Emmanuel Aziken

Wike’s politics of gbas-gbos — the brand of raw confrontation that blurs party lines, intimidates institutions, and thrives on public spectacle — appeared, until recently, immune to political boundaries. For years, Nyesom Wike operated in a space where allegiance to party mattered less than allegiance to power. He fought PDP leaders while funding APC victories. He governed Rivers State while shaping national outcomes. He abused party structures, yet both parties courted him.

That unusual political immunity, however, was visibly disrupted on Monday, January 5, 2026.

For days, Wike’s “thank-you tour” of local government areas in Rivers State had resembled a political carnival unprecedented in Nigeria’s multiparty history. Sitting PDP and APC officials, local government chairmen, ward leaders, and political appointees — many of whom should ordinarily be beholden to Governor Siminalayi Fubara — openly rallied behind a former governor now serving as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory.

It was a phenomenon that reinforced Wike’s long-standing image: a politician whose personal structure had outgrown formal party platforms. In community after community, he was received like a parallel authority. Songs were sung. Testimonies rendered. Insults fired at his successor. The rallies were less “thank you tours” than rolling referendums on relevance.

At every stop, Wike returned to one refrain — the “mistake” he made in producing Fubara as governor. He never hid ownership of that decision. And at every opportunity, he vowed publicly to “correct” it. In Rivers’ political lexicon, the meaning was unmistakable: Fubara must not return as governor.

Until Oyigbo.

Oyigbo Local Government Area is not just another political stop. It occupies a unique psychological and political space in Rivers State. Bordering Abia and historically tied to the Igbo hinterland, Oyigbo is often described as one of the most Igbo-leaning LGAs in Rivers. During the height of IPOB’s influence, it was among the territories where the Monday sit-at-home order was most effectively enforced — until Wike, as governor, confronted and broke the ritual, staging one of his most dramatic assertions of state authority.

It was therefore symbolically fitting that Oyigbo would become the theatre of disruption.

Now over two years out of office but wielding federal power, Wike mounted the Oyigbo podium with the same rhetorical fire. But midway into his familiar sermonising, the tune changed. He warned national leaders of the All Progressives Congress to “stay away from Rivers affairs.” He accused unnamed APC figures of dabbling in the state’s crisis and allegedly seeking bribes from the N600 billion said to have been left behind during the controversial emergency rule and sole-administrator episode.

In Wike’s political grammar, it was an attempt to reassert territorial ownership — to remind Abuja that Rivers was still his battlefield.

But that declaration crossed a line.

That night, before Port Harcourt slept, the music changed.

The response from the national secretary of the APC, Senator Ajibola Basiru, was arguably the hardest institutional slap Wike has received since a naval lieutenant once turned him back from a building in the FCT. Basiru did not trade insults. He did not engage in Wike’s preferred theatre. He went straight to the structural jugular.

He reminded Wike, pointedly, that he is not a member of the APC. That he has no authority to determine the fate of any APC governor in any state — including Rivers. That he is not the only non-member who supported President Bola Tinubu in 2023. And by implication, that gratitude does not translate into ownership.

It was not gbas-gbos. It was bureaucracy. And that made it more dangerous.

Unlike his many previous political confrontations, Wike has yet to reply Basiru. Even more telling, his public attacks on Fubara have since lost their usual colour and confidence. The gaudy declarations of “correcting the mistake” have softened. The confrontational energy has thinned.

Wike understands the terrain too well to misread that signal. In Nigeria’s party architecture, it is the national chairman and national secretary who sign nomination papers. They are the gatekeepers of ambition. No amount of street popularity substitutes for institutional endorsement. And after detonating his bridge with the PDP, Wike and his Rivers entourage do not currently command a viable alternative platform for 2027.

This is where the Oyigbo moment becomes politically instructive.

Basiru’s intervention was not an emotional outburst. It was a boundary notice.

And in politics, boundaries are more lethal than insults.

Ironically, Governor Fubara — often portrayed as the weaker link in this triangle — has become the unintended beneficiary of Wike’s slip. Whatever his deficiencies in political tact, strategy, or personal charm, the battle has now shifted from a one-on-one duel to an institutional contest. The APC national leadership has inserted itself between Wike and Rivers. And when institutions enter a conflict, personal dominance loses potency.

The crisis is no longer merely about a predecessor seeking to “correct a mistake.” It has become a question of who controls political processes: the man who built a structure, or the party that controls the forms.

This does not suddenly make Fubara a political genius. It does not erase his early miscalculations or administrative uncertainties. But it relocates the conflict to a terrain where Wike’s traditional weapons — crowd psychology, rhetorical intimidation, local political machines and IOUs — are less decisive.

For the first time in months, the Rivers drama is no longer scripted solely by Wike.

And that may mark the quiet ebb of a politics that thrived on permanent gbas-gbos.

The Oyigbo disruption may not end Wike’s relevance. But it has exposed its limits. In Nigeria, politicians can dominate spaces. They rarely dominate systems.

And Wike, for the first time in a long while, has run into the system.

Your correspondent presumes that this disruption is what provoked the Wike inspired House of Assembly to issue Fubara and his deputy, Prof Ngozi Odu with impeachment notices. That indeed, may be the final mortification of the Wike phenomenon if the Fubara antagonists fail in this rushed bid to correct the mistake.

The post Wike’s Politics of Gbas-Gbos, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.