By
Dr. Anthony Philips
Jigawa State’s Governor Mohammed Badaru commended Governor Nyesom Wike for delivering Rivers to APC, an unbelievable feat according to Badaru.
This was a confirmation that the G5 sold out to APC since Wike’s double tragic loss in the PDP presidential primary and his rejection as the Vice Presidential candidate.
For the G5, war was declared immediately against its own party whereas PDP continued to live in the past, believing that Wike and his group were reconcilable until it was too late to act. They failed to recognize how much damage they did to Wike’s ego. If only they could figure out his assumptions and body language , they would have known better.
Short of claiming ownership of the party because of his lion share of the financial contribution to the running of the party since he (Wike) became the Governor, he arrogated to himself right of first pick. For him, the idea of losing the candidacy of PDP, his so-to-say property, was unacceptable. And when he was possibly persuaded by his team to accept the second place as Running Mate, he probably reluctantly agreed.
You heard it from Governor Samuel Ortom that “Wike was badly treated.” Since when does losing an election earn such qualifications?
Anyone going to a contest knows that you either win or lose. No, not to the G5, they earned the position by their earlier investments in the party. I wonder why they allowed the primary. Oh, just to satisfy the imagination of those who thought that the constitution had anything to do with it. Well the constitution played its part, as proven, and Wike lost his bid for the presidency. The members of the party, PDP made their choice. Wike was voted out.
This pill was too bitter for Nyesom Wike to swallow. It was not only offensive to his bloated ego, but an affront comparable only to a declaration of war against him. Let’s face it, if Wike was not Presidential Candidate or Vice Presidential Candidate, what is left in the jar?
He did not pick up application form for any other position –Senate, for example. The idea of taking the backseat in PDP was abomination to Wike and his team; they were supposed to be the emerging new-breed leaders of PDP. If the party was not ready for them, they are not ready to be shuffled to the backseat. Wike claimed it when he said that they were not handing the party back to those who damaged it in 2015. This was a reference to what the New PDP did against the party in 2015.
But call a spade a spade, the declaration of war against Atiku and the party was Wike’s call. And it was simply an ego trip that he will later regret. For Wike he must “show them.” If we listened to him on several occasions, he repeated it that “we must show them,“ before he moved on to “as e de pepper dem.” I guess that must have been after rallying his troops and he was paid allocation backlog by Mr. President.
The party was blindsided on so many developments that eventually determined the outcome of the election. The party was fooled by Mr. President that he would conduct a free and fair election. This later turned out to be false.
Upon the benefit of hindsight, Wike must have been double dealing with APC all along. He had this as his PLAN B, which turned out to be unknown to some members of G5 too.
Again in Gov Ortom’s words, G5’s earlier position was to support the Labour Party; but because Wike knew that the President was going to rig for APC, he made a u-turn. If all these pieces of information were processed, perhaps the PDP strategy might have been different. Otherwise, why declare police action against a group that had declared full-scale war against you?
If PDP had seen it coming, leaders would have taken the battle to Wike and his group. PDP has the power to disarm the group but did nothing. When Wike approached the court to stop PDP from suspending or dismissing him from the party, it was the final move to tie the party’s hand from dislocating their agenda.
One single fact is that Atiku was running on the mantra of the “Unifier;” but the G5 rebellion continued to prove otherwise. Even if the people understand their disruptive tendencies, they continued to wonder why they could not be contained. Again, it was ignored as if it did not matter.
Should that be true, G5 went on throughout the campaign period inflicting so much damage by adding to the voice of the opposition. This should have been stopped by the party. Instead, they were ignored like spoilt brats throwing tantrums.
Leaving them to thrive in that fashion emboldened other groups to believe that a winner was most unlikely to emerge in the race. Therefore, they became belligerent and refused to align with any of the two big parties. Nonetheless, it is too early to draw any conclusion of the impact of G5 or other parties in this election until the real results are published at the end of the court’s decisions.
ANTHONY PHILLIPS WRITES FROM LAGOS