Perceptions 2023: Nyesom Wike, Yahaya Bello

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Today, we look at the aspirations of two incumbent governors in their supposed quest to take over the seat of power in Aso Rock Villa, from 2023.

NYESOM WIKE, 58

Whatever you have against Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, CON, the current Rivers State governor (from 2015), and there could be a long list of indiscretions and malevolence, it will be difficult to lump him with the usual unprincipled posse of Nigerian drifter class of politicians. He has been, and remained, a member of PDP from the inception of the Fourth Republic, through thick and thunder. From being the chairman of Obio Akpor LGA, for two terms (1999 – 2007); as the Chief of Staff to Gov. Rotimi Amaechi (2007-2011), Minister of State, Education (2011-2013), and substantive minister of education (2013-2014). All in PDP.

He campaigned to become the sixth governor of Rivers State in the 2015 elections, to replace his former boss who had shunted to the APC, and was rooting for another candidate, Dakuku Peterside. Wike won the election in a bitter and brutal battle. There were fervent and virulent arguments and depositions by Dakuku and his sponsors to overturn Wike’s victory at the Election Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. The Rivers election was allegedly rife with massive acts of malpractices and commission of violent atrocities. Wike allegedly scored 1,029,102 votes (a hefty 87.77%), leaving others with less than 200,000 votes! Yet, according to his opponent, the total valid accredited votes were a mere 292,878. And the tribunal and court of appeal agreed with Dakuku, and scrapped the election, calling for a rerun.

Wike battled on to the Supreme Court where his grandiloquent landslide was upheld in late January 2016.

His 2019 reelection bid was no less chaotic. In fact, the election was suspended for days in Rivers State as a result of widespread violence and blatant electoral malfeasance. Nonetheless, Wike, the combative mobiliser of means and manpower, was returned to the governor’s office.

What would Rivers people say about the two terms of Wike, in comparison to his predecessors? Beyond executive bluster and intimidation, unbridled enthusiasm to crush any known and unknown obstacles in well-appointed glee…and his somewhat amusing disregard for ceremonial authorities cowed by contemporary disdain and disrespect…what exactly is Wike bringing to the national table?

One is his much-vaunted strides in prioritizing education in his state. He declared free education up to secondary schools, during his first term…his administration claimed to have invested billions of naira in an unprecedented manner into Rivers school system, especially at basic and intermediate levels, in the 23 LGAs; revamped school structures, and enabled access to national exams, such as NECO, JAMB, etc; and abolished all forms of fees and levies.

However, this sterling outlay has been severely dented by accusations of lack of teachers, leading to abandonment of some schools; inadequate teaching infrastructure, and failure to pay NECO fees, leading to seizure of results. Whichever is true, Wike has a big job in hand to justify any higher ambition.

There are some who posit that Nigeria is a jungle, and therefore needs a toughie, a hard-nosed, no-nonsense benevolent dictator with surplus energy to beat the nation into some semblance of progress or upward movement. Well, I disagree ‘with reasons’. Nigeria is still a member of the global community, and its leaders must not be seen as brutal, barnstorming extremists with scant regard for human dignity and integrity of institutional entities.

Even as a deputy to a genteel visionary, Wike has the tendency to combust and scatter whatever presidential trajectory is being nurtured. Surely, a man to keep at arm’s length from the ultimate power throne.

YAHAYA BELLO, 46

Here’s the big deal: The youngest governor since the advent of the Fourth Republic now wants to be the youngest elected African president ever…sometimes wishes are horses! The young man is well educated: an accounting graduate and MBA holder from Ahmadu Bello University. He is industrious and entrepreneurial: he ran his own business, FairPlus International Ltd., fairly well, and joined politics as a conspicuous youth leader, in Kogi.

His ascendancy to power was fortuitous: he became the only governor born after the civil war when the man he came second to in the 2015 APC primaries, Abubakar Audu, died after winning the election, but before he was officially declared as the winner. Then, the party, in its wisdom, chose not to upgrade Audu’s running mate, Abiodun Faleke to replace the stricken front-runner. Thus emerged Yahaya Adoza Bello.

A storm erupted, but Bello surged on…to become the luckiest indweller of the historic Lugard House in Lokoja, the state capital. On November, 16, 2019, he returned to the seat after beating PDP candidate, Musa Wada, in his first real electioneering process. His campaign activities were remarkably distasteful such that he was allegedly placed on a no-visa list by the USA government, among others fingered in benefitting from electoral rascality.

Bello was credited with precipitating a culture of violence with his “ta-ta-ta-ta” chant on campaign stump, imitating gunfire spurts that could easily be interpreted as gifts to be unleashed on his adversaries. The alleged morbid auto-suggestion was roundly condemned.

One more notoriety: his baffling well-publicised insistence that COVID-19 was an “artificial creation”, and was non-existent in Kogi State, bringing him at loggerheads with NCDC, the managers of the anti-virus efforts in Nigeria. But that didn’t stop him from collecting the FG recovery fund to combat the effects of COVID-19 for Kogi State; nor did he persuade him not to pepper Kogi’s 2021 budget with several large expenditure heads for COVID countermeasures. It would not be strange if these measures were mostly window dressing. Of course, he was roundly condemned for endangering the lives of Kogi people while pandering to soulless grandstanding, and misdirected activism.

Apart from snatching a professorial chair from some imagined institution, rightly lampooned in the media, there were the instances of humongous sums of vanishing state funds said to have been allegedly squirreled through his gatekeeping techniques. Allegations of multiple withdrawals of hundreds of millions of naira, approved and dispensed within 14 days of becoming the governor (from January 27 – his first day in office – to February 8, 2016).

This sorry state of affairs, Bello’s critics insist, has become the norm with sundry petitions and allegations piling up at the offices of the EFCC, awaiting the cessation of the immunity cover as incumbent governor.

Rather than pinning to be the next president of Nigeria, we advise Yahaya Bello to gird his loins and warchest for the expected multifarious battles in the courts of law and detention camps, for multiple allegations of spiraling and eye-popping heists and other abuses. Such is the breadth and stench of these allegations that it beggars belief the man’s audacity to attempt exporting his “dexterity” and prodigious acumen to the national stage. A wonder unspeakable.