When he hosted President-elect Bola Tinubu on May 3 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Governor Nyesom Wike again put on display his masterful gifts as a formidable host, effervescent raconteur, and bold and mesmerising public speaking. He is not quite an orator in the classical sense, not even in the ordinary sense, but he has an immense capacity to skewer and enthrall.

In state banquets, he never associates with existing protocols; he sees members of the high table and the audience as an opportunity to indulge his gift as an anecdotist. For everyone he recognises in the audience or the high table, there is always an anecdote.

He is never tired of lauding the role of one of his predecessors, Peter Odili, nor the wife, Justice Mary Odili, a former Justice of the Supreme Court. Indeed, had his predecessor Rotimi Amaechi managed to stay in his good books, there is no telling just how far he would go in smothering him with adulations, much of it laced with witticisms. With his troubadours in tow, there is always an earthy, jocose and fecund feeling around Mr Wike when he serenades his guests and excoriates his enemies.

Last Wednesday, however, Mr Wike had little to say about his opponents, particularly those left in the benighted Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); instead, he was remarkably even-tempered and mild-mannered. Yes, he threw a barb or two at the PDP during the state banquet, but he mostly avoided his enemies and spoke glowingly about how he importuned the president-elect to visit Rivers and commission his 12th flyover and a Magistrate Court complex. He visited the president-elect in France and Abuja, he confessed, and in the end ensured the two-day visit became a reality. But it would be wrong to focus on his importunity alone, and then conclude that the governor possesses incomparable political sagacity. It is far more than that. Beyond Mr Wike’s flamboyance and sometimes elocutionary bombast, and far beyond his persistence or even feigned aggressiveness that masks a genial outlook and empathetic personality, is a shrewd political engineer with a genuine and consummate proclivity for building bridges across ethnic and religious divides. He loves politics, and has managed, with the help of his troubadours, a guttural voice, and an unquestioning gift of the gab, to infect nearly everyone with his inimitable passion.

President-elect Tinubu has not disclosed publicly why he honoured Mr Wike’s invitation beyond declaring that a promise was a debt. He gave his word before the presidential election was conducted, and he again reiterated his commitment after the polls, especially after the governor had, on account of the APC, caused seismic damage to the political fortunes of PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi. Perhaps the president-elect undertook what to all intents and purposes was his first state visit because he and Mr Wike are kindred souls. Both are indomitable fighters for causes they believe in; both are exponents of realpolitik; and both do not flinch in the face of battle. But comparing their politics, the president-elect has proved more principled and consistent than his host. In terms of public speaking, as Mr Wike waxed lyrical last Wednesday, his guest must have wistfully gaped at him. What would the sturdier Asiwaju Tinubu not give to have a sizable portion of his host’s proficiency? The president-elect’s consolation is that more than any of his contemporaries, he outthinks, outmanoeuvres, and outfoxes everyone else. Both men obviously retain a healthy admiration for each other. Could they then make a formidable pair?

Asiwaju Tinubu has not indicated publicly what he thinks about Mr Wike’s political future. Nor, beyond mouthing his loyalty to the PDP, has the Rivers governor said anything really significant about his future plans. He is immensely gifted, and as the president-elect hinted obliquely last Wednesday, Mr Wike’s accomplishments make it ineluctable to be of service to Nigeria in higher capacity. It may, therefore, have crossed the mind of the incoming president to lure the governor into his cabinet or something else grander. But has it also crossed the mind of Mr Wike? If so, in what capacity does he see himself operating? Should he join the Tinubu administration, the governor will then not be available for the ‘enemy’ in 2027, and his talent for grassroots mobilisation for the opposition would be neutered. In short, Mr Wike is perched dangerously on the horns of a dilemma. He has the option of staying put in the PDP and leading the charge for its rediscovery and renewal. He will recall that the president-elect was in that position too in 2007 when faced with the choice of joining the administration of his friend, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, or staying to rebuild and reposition the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). Staying put in the ACN ensured, along with many other factors, that Asiwaju Tinubu is today president-elect. If zoning and rotational presidency endure, Mr Wike, who is about 55 now, will fancy the opportunity of taking a shot at the presidency 16 years down the line. So he will be anxious to know whether to work with the APC administration or stay back in the PDP.

Mr Wike will be unable to replicate in Rivers what Asiwaju Tinubu executed in Lagos between 2007 and the 2023. So, there is no guarantee that as an outgoing governor, despite foisting his choice pick on the state, he could remain relevant long enough to achieve much higher political objectives. Joining the Tinubu administration will, therefore, only offer him short term guarantees. It will also mean burning his bridges thereby ensuring that a future return to the PDP would be nearly impossible. He should not see the capricious former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who has no fixed opinion on anything, as a role model. Rivers State is today PDP; Mr Wike could not leave for higher duties and still hope to call the shots, even in considerably muted capacity, in his successor’s administration. It takes so much more than just willing and wishing it to stay significantly relevant in Rivers, whether as a PDP man and former governor, or as a powerful member of the new administration in Abuja. His best bet is to stay and help reform and reposition the PDP. The opposition, not to say Nigeria as a whole, will be eternally grateful. Yes, should he remain in the opposition, he stands the risk of becoming irrelevant or diminished; but it is a far better risk to take than the enormously tempting APC gambit warming the cockles of his heart.

It is hard not to like Mr Wike, what with his rich baritone voice, his bonhomie, his songs, swagger and dancing steps, his occasional waspish tongue, his affability that is almost second to none, comparable only to Asiwaju Tinubu’s, and his joyous combativeness which turns mortal political combats into delicious movie depictions of bloodied and bowed losers as well as pyrrhic victories. With him, there is no boring moment. And with him, notwithstanding his few inconsistencies and occasional lapse of principles, the observer gets the distinct feeling that life could not be more livable and agreeable. If he continues to play his cards adroitly, wary of the reckless and careless bluffs that undermine the joker card, the last may not have been heard of him.

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State clearly hopes to win the November 11, 2023 governorship poll for the All Progressives Congress (APC). He is so confident of success that he concocted the victory of Usman Ahmed Ododo in a primary election purportedly carried out on March 14. For the sloganeering governor who rhapsodises inclusion and fairness, he ensured that Mr Ododo, his handpicked aspirant who hails from the same Kogi Central Senatorial District as he, and the same town to boot, won. Should Mr Bello’s candidate win the election, Kogi Central Senatorial District would produce governors in quick succession when Kogi West has yet to produce one. Kogi East under Governors Ibrahim Idris and Idris Wada had also produced a slew of governors while marginalising the other two senatorial districts. If Kogi East could do it in the past, why not Kogi Central?

The primary that produced Mr Ododo was deeply flawed, and it had no pretext to be called a primary election. But the governor has moved very quickly to solidify his insular choice and present the APC national leadership and the president-elect with a fait accompli. He took the party’s standard-bearer in tow to visit both the president and the president-elect. The visits are a peculiarly Nigerian thing. The national leaders of the party are of course aware of Mr Bello’s political chicanery, but they probably lack the courage and wisdom to put the governor in his place and order a better supervised rerun. Both the president and president-elect are also unlikely to do anything about the flawed candidacy of Mr Ododo. They won’t lean on the governor to follow due process, especially when the party itself has been reluctant to sanitise its internal processes. And they won’t jump ahead of themselves to get the governor and the party to behave. They will let bad enough alone.

The APC primary that produced Mr Ododo was a sham. But far beyond that replicated nonsense, the very idea of handpicking and backing a Kogi Central aspirant for the November race shows the governor to be dangerously anti-democratic, parochial and contemptuous of the national APC and the leadership of the party. Before his second term election, Mr Bello had given the impression that he would back power rotation. For a man enamoured of habitually telling untruths, it is tragic anyone in the state believed him. As it turned out, the governor did not even wait for endorsement or votes before he flagrantly conjured a questionable victory for himself to the shame of sensible Kogites. Violent and threatening in outlook, and wholly devoid of patience and liberal inclination, Mr Bello has become accustomed to seizing whatever he wants. He was gifted his first term by a conspiratorial group of APC top politicians; he then simply went ahead to snatch a second term in defiance of the rules of the game. In November, he will hope to reenact his unusual and demeaning playbook.

Three main contenders have lined up for the Kogi governorship poll in November: APC’s Mr Ododo, the pawn; Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Dino Melaye, the comedian; and African Democratic Congress (ADC) Leke Abejide, the sober. Of the three, Mr Abejide is the least controversial, and the most politically and ethically savvy and level-headed. The APC candidate is the product of a defective party process; he will likely be punished at the poll if Kogi East and Kogi West can lay aside the weights that burden and divide them. Mr Ododo’s Kogi Central constitutes less than 30 percent of the voting population; Mr Bello will hope that his talisman is potent enough to keep the other districts in perpetual conflict. The PDP’s Senator Melaye is so melodramatic that it is difficult to settle the order of unimportance between his theatrics and his frivolity. Flippant, irreverent, abusive, and gifted with boyish enthusiasm and a despairing lack of seriousness, neither he nor his dispirited party will be of help to his candidacy.

The ADC’s Mr Abejide is regarded as a serious and gifted politician, but he is hoisted by a party that remains on the fringes of party politics in Nigeria, despite its capacity to turn heads in Kogi and punch above its weight. His only chance of winning is to hope that the national APC would defer to Mr Bello’s inanities and refuse entreaties to redo its primary. In addition, there are many aggrieved voters in Kogi East whose choices, particularly the heavy-spending and likable Murtala Ajaka, are waiting to show the governor how not to be insular. Should Mr Abejide reach some agreement with those who matter in Kogi East, it is hard to see Mr Bello’s strong-arm tactics prevailing in November. The election will be better policed than it was in 2019 when brazen electoral robbery was enacted to the dismay of all Nigerians and to the indifference of security agencies. This year will be different, and both BVAS and IReV balloting tools will castrate electoral robbers and their sponsors. And with many voters waiting to punish and embarrass the Kogi governor, regardless of the personal qualities of Mr Ododo, the election will be figuratively bloody.

All Mr Bello relies upon is that the fait accompli he has presented the national leadership of the party and the president and president-elect will leave them with no choice but to back his candidate in order to retain Kogi in the APC column. That abysmal fait accompli worked for Kogi East when they also disregarded the feelings of other senatorial districts to entrench Kogi East candidates as governors in those unhappy days. Unfortunately but not unsurprisingly, Mr Bello does not have the wisdom and the foresight to break the mould. He appears to be gambling that the national leadership of his party would be willing to risk all they stand for and have accomplished in this election cycle to help his candidate win. How the governor expects his bosses in Abuja to lift a finger to help him, let alone travel down to Kogi to join his campaign, is hard to fathom.

Obi averse to truth
After many weeks of dithering and waffling, Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has finally confessed on Arise Television last Tuesday that the phone conversation he had with the founder of Living Faith Church Worldwide, David Oyedepo, shortly before the presidential election was true. Why did it take him so long? For a man and politician so averse to telling the truth, strangely even that confession was again festooned with half-truths.

About a week after the leaked audio first surfaced in late March, and despite the contradictory statements by LP spokesmen, Mr Obi declared emphatically that the phone call was fake. Said he: “Let me reiterate that the audio call being circulated is fake, and at no time throughout the campaign and now did I ever say, think, or even imply that the 2023 election is, or was a religious war.”

Instructively, Dr Oyedepo’s approach to the embarrassing leak was to simply evade the issue by declaring his political neutrality. Both men avoided the question of whether the phone call took place.

Pressed by his interviewers on Arise TV to admit or deny the authenticity of the leaked audio, Mr Obi half-heartedly and evasively said: “Whatever you call it, whatever anybody wants to make of it, it is fine with me. All I can tell you is that I am not a religious or tribal bigot. I just said it; whatever they are making about this is their business. I have shown you examples, several examples this evening of things that were said about me that are false, from dual citizens, from detention, from treason….so whatever they make it.”

Clearly, Mr Obi is uncomfortable with telling the truth. It took another leading question to wrest the truth from him. Hear him: “For me, let me even assume it happened. Do you think I can just pick a phone and say religious war? No, there must have been a conversation. I was even begging the bishop to help me to ask his people to vote which is what I was doing for six months. Begging. I wasn’t saying snatch it, kill it, take it, force it. I was even begging, which shows that I will continue to look for votes by begging.” This is truly numbing. Mr Obi had just confessed to lying, and he seems oblivious of the fact. Nor was he aware that the issue even transcended the matter of whether he described the election as a religious war or not. The question was whether the phone call took place. A man who tried to be president spent weeks evading a simple question, and as many weeks stoutly refusing to admit the truth.

The Nations