For President Bola Tinubu, his re-election bid in 2027 may not be as easy as he probably may have envisaged. In 2023, even though he was not in power, it was a lot easier then to rally all interests of his supporters to queue behind him. But this time, as the sitting president with several interests with influence and bloated ambitions around his party and outside his party, he has to find a way of balancing the art so as to ensure everyone is happy and their selfish desires accommodated to secure him his second term ticket come 2027.
How he is going to do that, I don’t know, but what is certain is that all interested feuding parties must be pacified and made happy for his 2027 dream to come to reality.
Last week, the raging dispute between the elected All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and the appointed FCT Minister Nyesom Wike came to a head in an open spat.
Wike’s overbearing nature and his devil-may-care disposition towards others will certainly not always sit well with anybody with a modicum of self-worth. His brash and I-know-it-all mannerism have ensured that he only now has around him, only those he can talk down at and never ready to yield ground on anything.
Now enter the governors, especially the governors of the ruling party. These men are so powerful that they can make or mar the ambition of any president, especially in a democracy as ours where the outcome of elections do not reflect the wishes of the voters.
The shenanigans we witness as local government elections in all the states and the FCT are what play out at both governorship and presidential elections. The governors are in total control of the states and, to a very large extent, the federal legislatures.
And so when Wike says APC governors are politically lazy, he means that whereas he can be relied upon to deliver 100 percent to President Tinubu, these governors may not be able to achieve that.
As a ploy to deliver Rivers and Abuja especially, and perhaps others too, he has been promoting a phantom, so-called raimbow coalition of political parties in states, yet he has not deemed it worthy to get the buy-in of the state governors.
Meanwhile, these governors as well as several Nigerians, know that this coalition only exists in the head of Wike.
But because he thinks Tinubu needs him, perhaps, more than the governors, he apparently only relates with him, and not with the governors.
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He says President Tinubu is aware of his “Rainbow Coalition” and all his political activities ahead of the 2027 election.
The Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), the umbrella body of governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), had said it would not endorse any political arrangement capable of weakening the party or affecting its candidates in the general election. In other words, what will whittle down their influence in their states.
Hope Uzodimma, governor of Imo and chairman of the forum, said the governors would not support an arrangement capable of creating divided loyalty or undermining the APC.
However, Wike said the governors’ opposition to him did not begin with the coalition, noting that they were unhappy with Tinubu’s decision to appoint him FCT minister.
“There is nothing that I do that I don’t tell Mr. President,” Wike said.
He said the Rainbow Coalition was initiated to mobilise support across party lines for Tinubu’s re-election.
He also said his support for the president should not be interpreted as support for the APC as a party.
Wike said he had never approached the APC or the PGF to form an alliance.
The former governor of Rivers recalled that the G5, a group of five PDP governors, supported Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election without entering into an alliance with the APC.
Wike said the 2023 election showed that voters could support candidates from different political parties in separate elections held on the same day.
The FCT minister cited Imo State, where he said Tinubu secured less than 10 per cent of the presidential votes while APC candidates won two senatorial seats, while the Labour Party (LP) won one.
Wike also recalled Ebonyi State, where he said Tinubu lost the presidential election while APC candidates won the three senatorial seats.
“An election that was held the same day. What happened that the electorate knew how to vote for the president of the Labour Party, and they voted for APC at the National Assembly election?” he asked.
Wike said governors who support Tinubu’s re-election can still support candidates of their respective parties in other elections.
He also dismissed suggestions that the Rainbow Coalition was designed to increase his personal political influence.
Wike said he is not answerable to APC governors, adding that his focus as FCT minister is on delivering projects in the capital.
He criticised the APC governors who addressed the media over the coalition, describing them as “smart” but “politically lazy”.
“The governors of Osun, Anambra, and Abia states are supporting the president’s re-election. Won’t they still support the candidates of their parties in other elections? So where is the confusion?” he asked.
“I’m not answerable to APC governors.’
Wike said the Imo governor should be concerned about the voting pattern in his state during the 2023 presidential election.
“Hope Uzodimma was the governor of Imo State, yet President Tinubu could not secure 10 per cent of the votes there. But he took two senators, and the Labour Party took one senator,” he said.
“As I sit here today, I will tell you that the President will win in the FCT,” he boasted.
Where is Wike getting all this assurance from that he speaks with so much certainty? Where is Wike getting the confidence that Rivers and FCT must vote President Tinubu? Wike has been telling Senator Ireti Kingibe, for as long as I can remember, that she will not return to the Senate.
When Wike speaks, is he speaking like a man with just one vote, like everyone else, or as a totalitarian leader, who has the right of life and death with him?
Well, because Tinubu wanted Wike to manufacture results for him from Rivers State in 2023, he went to him, just like he did to others like Seyi Makinde. For his good work, he was compensated with the appointment as the FCT minister.
The smart man that Wike is, he has fought hard to ensure that Rivers does not slip from his grip, hence his preparedness to set the state on fire just to make sure that Governor Siminalayi Fubara, remains a puppet. He finally has Rivers under his firm grip, and the election is around the corner. He knows he cannot be ignored with Rivers and FCT assuredly in the kitty.
The so-called rainbow coalition is only a facade or a ploy to create a semblance of multiparty coalition behind Tinubu when, in reality, it is a paper tiger. The so-called PDP faction in the coalition, which is the Wike decimated PDP, exists only in the minds of Wike and his co-travellers. They are not of any political relevance or electoral value.
Wike still has all this clout only because he is the FCT minister and has the war chest to prosecute his many wars. If he is removed or seconded to another ministry, that will be the end of his political significance to Tinubu, and the president knows this and cannot afford that now.
President Tinubu must now tinker with a solution to see how he pacifies Wike as well as the agitated APC governors.
Tinubu must do this because no matter how relevant he thinks Wike is, he must realise he has attracted for himself so much enemies as a result of his brash and overbearing nature and this might turn around to hurt the president’s ambition come 2027.
