Wike Getting Awfully Close to Fighting Tinubu By Farooq A. Kperogi

Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike revels in controversies, contentious public disputations, vituperative recriminations, and tensile political stress like a pig exults in mud. Peace and harmony bore him to tears. That is why he has an incrementally lengthening list of political spats with multiple people.

His quarrel with Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his former protégé, is his biggest and most sustained conflict. He is waging an open, ugly battle with his handpicked successor over political control in Rivers State, including public accusations and counter-accusations tied to governance decisions, patronage, and the state’s political machinery.

He remains entangled in the PDP’s internal civil war, including arguments over whether disciplinary actions against him and his allies stand, plus competing claims of authority and legitimacy inside the party structure.

Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed has publicly accused Wike of working to undermine him, with references to intimidation, smear campaigns, and broader PDP turmoil. Wike has responded with derision and counter-attacks.

Wike is also slinging mud with Ohanaeze Ndigbo President-General John Azuta-Mbata. In response to Azuta-Mbata’s caution that “there is only one governor in Rivers State,” Wike characterized the former senator as a worthless, opportunistic local champion who was a “senator for eight years but there is nothing you can say you did for your people.”

“Can somebody tell this semi-illiterate, swashbuckling, crisis-loving gentleman that Rivers State belongs to all of us, not him alone?” Azuta-Mbata shot back.

Wike has ensured that his long-running rivalry with Rotimi Amaechi, his predecessor, remains active in public discourse, including his dismissal of Amaechi’s political prospects and recurring jabs tied to Rivers State legacy politics and national ambition.

And he is embroiled in a fresh, high-profile intra-establishment clash with APC national secretary Ajibola Basiru, who is from Osun State, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s real state of origin.

I expect Tinubu to be next on the list. In fact, in fighting Basiru, Wike has inadvertently roped in Tinubu. “Don’t take our support for President Tinubu for granted,” he said to Basiru. “You have to be careful with your statements.”

In other words, Wike is obliquely, nay explicitly, telling Tinubu that his support for a 2027 reelection is not guaranteed. It is conditional. It is contingent on reciprocity. If the president will not let him have Rivers State, he will stall the president’s reelection campaign within his sphere of influence.

To underline this point, he said, “I can challenge anybody (including the president). This state is a no-go area.” In fact, the Tinubu-friendly P.M. News reported on January 5 that Wike “mocked speculations that he would be given instruction from above to allow Gov. Fubara run for second term.”

When you add his threat that his support for President Tinubu should not be taken for granted to his boast that he can “challenge anybody” and his lampooning of suggestions that he could be commanded by “orders from above” (which is mere code for Tinubu) to yield to Fubara, who appears to be very close to Tinubu now, you can tell that it is only a matter of time before Wike’s confrontation with Tinubu blows up in the open.

Again, Vice President Kashim Shettima’s subtle, diplomatically delivered but nonetheless poignant reminder to Wike that state governors are, by convention, the leaders of the party in their states, which APC national chairman Nentawe Yilwatda pushed back against, signals a deeper intra-establishment trouble.

It is not clear if Shettima’s sly dig conveyed Tinubu’s message. But the vice president knows a thing or two about the wisdom and political utility of maintaining a respectable distance from, and allowing a wide latitude of independence for, people whose rise to power you facilitated.

As I have pointed out in many previous articles, the VP and Governor Babagana Zulum, his handpicked successor, have a relationship that is almost unexampled in Nigeria. Zulum even led an impassioned physical protest in June 2025 when the VP’s name was excluded from the APC North-East stakeholders’ endorsement for the 2027 presidential election. He led delegates who chanted, “Shettima! Shettima!” “No Shettima, no APC in the North-East!”

I am yet to see that level of loyalty to a predecessor from any governor years after election. Perhaps Kogi State Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo can rival that depth of loyalty, given that so far he has not fallen out with his benefactor and predecessor Yahaya Bello. Wike, and several political “godfathers,” have a lot to learn from Shettima and Bello.

But why does Wike get his highs from perpetual political crisis? My own sense is that it is the product of Dutch courage, as alcohol-inspired bravado is called. As any casual observer of his histrionics can tell, he always looks like a bibulous reveler.

There is a recent viral video of his media aide slyly handing him a bottle of an alcoholic beverage while he was speaking. Perhaps the aide noticed that Wike was in danger of getting sober and running out of his Dutch courage.

Someone close to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar once confided in me that Wike’s compulsive alcoholism and predilection for disruptive, alcohol-fueled theatrics was the single most important reason he was passed over as a running mate in 2023.

Wike is a great example of why I am a teetotaler, that is, a total abstainer from alcoholic drinks. My father, as many of my readers know, was an Islamic cleric. He was, of course, a scrupulous teetotaler, inspired by his strong Muslim faith.

However, in bringing us up to also be teetotalers, he relied on the resources of logic. He taught us that being drunk deprives one of control over one’s consciousness, and one’s environment, and that such a state can birth many untoward things. He used to call alcohol the mother of sins. Wike is proof positive of this.

In his drunken state, he is fighting everyone and revealing information that normal, sober people keep under wraps. For example, in vituperating APC national secretary Ajibola Basiru, Wike suggested that he helped teleguide the judiciary to secure the court outcome that led to the withholding of Osun State’s local government funds.

One widely circulated version of his remarks, seen in a video of his speech in Port Harcourt, quoted him as implying that the court action did not happen by accident and that powerful actors worked behind the scenes to shape it.

“Today, you are enjoying in Osun. You don’t know those who did the work,” he said. “Anything you see, take it. Anything you see, what? Take it.” No sober person publicly confesses to subverting the course of justice.

Now, he has begun to say things about Tinubu that most sober, self-aware people who are as favored as he is in this government would recoil from.

In Wike’s bacchanalian braggadocio, he is far too gone to realize just how vulnerable he is. Tinubu can remove him as a minister and take away a huge portion of the symbolic, political, and financial capital he deploys to remain relevant. He can disrupt his legendary hold on the judiciary and use Fubara, his nemesis, against him. Most people will celebrate his downfall.

When a man confuses noise for power and bravado for leverage, he mistakes indulgence for invincibility. Wike will soon discover that in politics, even the loudest drum can be silenced.