By Igbotako Nowinta
During the Presidential Election on February 25, 2023, Wike and his co-traitors abandoned the course of progress and national interest, and through a combination of trickery and gangsterism groveled before Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC. While hiding under the pretext of democracy they became insidious and ruthless enemies of our country. They simply reduced themselves to shameless betrayers in the name of making political capital out of the tensed electoral situation. They organized acts of sabotage which culminated in the cruel rigging of the said election to the benefit of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Wike particularly dipped into the valley of treachery. For him, it was a political suicide not to support the camp of a celebrated drug Lord seeking, with desperation to be the next president of Africa’s most populous nation; how selfishly myopic he reasoned. What we saw in Rivers State during the Presidential election and subsequent elections leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Wike demonstrated remarkable hatred and malice against democratic sanity and progress in our country. This is the irrefutable proof of his treachery by turning Rivers State into a calabash of blood. In unleashing his barbaric tactics, Wike played the wicked book of his co-travelers in APC – offered deaths and destruction, subjected the people to abuse and torture, and caused the death of innocent civilians, including some electoral officials, having failed to cow the promoters of excessive wind of change that furiously gripped Nigeria. We must continue to take a path of even greater surveillance, to support the flame of real change in the polity energetically by organizing ourselves so that we can take out the current tyranny – our revolutionary spirits must grow steadily. Our mission is to overthrow the enemies of our country, by using the instrumentality of democratic process, via true and fair elections. Seeing the so-called G5 Governors in Aso Rock Presidential Palace recently to pay homage to President Bola Tinubu, they revealed themselves as ruthless collaborators and potent instruments of national shame and calamity.
When the history of the general elections conducted in Nigeria, between February and March 2023, is documented, the names of Governors Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) and Seyi Makinde (Oyo) will be tagged the gang of traitors.
What did they do or what ignoble role did they play to warrant the negative appellation above? Perhaps, a brief journey into what happened in Nigeria in 1966 will explicitly help this discussion.
In 1966 – that was six years after Nigeria secured pseudo independence from Britain, the politicians of the First Republic had bent every rules in the book, meant to propel Nigeria to a great and prosperous nation.
In six years, mind boggling election rigging had taken place; the worst form of electoral gangsterism had been recorded; the crudest form of political intolerance and gruesome murders of political rivals had occurred; the politicians had descended to the gutter of insanity.
Corruption was magnified to the extent that the West Minister system of government, bequeathed to Nigeria by the British colonial bullies, was made to suffer irreparable damage; the country was steadily heading to the rocks – doomsday was imminent.
Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was the first Nigerian military personnel to become an officer in Military Intelligence. Born 26 February 1937, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu joined the Nigerian Army at the age of 20 as an Officer-cadet in March 1957.
Major Nzeogwu played a major role in the 1966 coup d’état that led to the tragic death of Abubakar Balewa and many others, all because of the undemocratic behavior of then political actors.
Emphatically, it was the ugly scenarios painted above that drove Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and the other Majors to strike on January 15, 1966. In heralding the first ever military coup d’état into Nigeria, Major Kaduna made a speech that has become a bitter reference point in Nigerian history.
Here is excerpts of the said declaration: “My dear countrymen, you will hear, and probably see a lot being done by certain bodies charged by the Supreme Council with the duties of national integration, supreme justice, general security, and property recovery…Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low places…those that seek to keep the country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and dreads.”
But sadly, for the Nigerian nation in 1966, the revolutionary message and genuine intentions of Major Kaduna Nzeogwu and his sidekicks were aborted because of the horrible course of events that befell the country.
History repeated itself in 1983 – with the political turmoil during the Second Republic which resulted the return of the Military, headed by the immediate past President of Nigeria, then Military Dictator, Muhammadu Buhari.
Most regrettably, in 2023 – 57 years after the truncation of the First Republic, Nigeria found itself again in similar scenarios like 1966, where election rigging, political, ethnic and religious intolerance and the unkindest form of maladministration have become the order of the day.
The 2023 general elections provided a wonderful opportunity for Nigerian people to get it right by electing a president of their dream. Nigerian electorates who had been drilled and drilled mercilessly by the Muhammadu Buhari’s disastrous civilian government were excited and battle-ready to give red cards to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Therefore, when the leading opposition political party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had its National Convention, Nyesom Wike, who was sure of grabbing the presidential ticket was treacherously knocked out in a grand conspiracy that was allegedly masterminded by the then National Chairman of the party, lyorchia Ayu.
To cut a long story short, Wike never forgave the likes of Iyorchia Ayu, and Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (who eventually ran for the 2023 presidential election under the banner of PDP), for edging him out of the presidential race.
Thus began a series of political messy games led by ex-Governor Wike with 4 other governors then under the PDP against the duo of Iyorchia Ayu and Atiku Abubakar.
The G5 governors, as they famously became known and addressed, began a ruthless uncompromising campaign against the PDP chairman, Iyorchia Ayu by asking him to resign, to respect the promise he made before the party convention was held.
The promise was that he as a northerner would resign as the PDP National Chairman if Atiku Abubakar, also being a Northerner became the presidential flag bearer of the party, but he reneged.
In asking Ayu to resign, the G5 governors gave the unconditional resignation of Ayu as PDP chairman, as a key condition for them to support the 2023 presidential aspirations of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
It must be pointed out quickly that Peter Obi who had unexpectedly abandoned the PDP presidential race by April 2023, for the Labour Party (LP) surprisingly became the darling of Nigerian electorates – as disillusioned citizens now felt they had a distinctive choice.
So, as the G5 Governors battled Iyorchia Ayu, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar relentlessly and the entire PDP Presidential campaign machine, many Nigerians who thought they were progressives watched with keen interest and admiration.
It was the genuine wish of many progressive Nigerians cum Peter Obi’s tumultuous supporters (otherwise known as Obidients) within the country and across the globe that the G5 Governors would at least save the country from the scandalous and deadly jaw of the APC’s maladministration.
Their revolutionary actions had been expected to support Peter Obi during the February 25, 2023 Presidential election. Rather, they consciously and tirelessly worked behind the scenes against the expectations of the bulk of Nigerian voters.
Wike in his utterances during the heat of the presidential campaigns boasted in several recorded tapes that the APC was not the way to go to choose Nigeria’s next president.
He even rubbished and ridiculed Bola Ahmed Tinubu when the APC presidential campaign went to Port – Harcourt to solicit for his support; he blasted the government of ex-president Muhammadu Buhari for leading the country astray and betraying the gigantic hope Nigerians placed on his leadership in 2015.
Here is one of such Wike’s quotes, promising never to give his support to the APC: “Any person who loves Mr. President won’t be causing unnecessary crisis for him. We have problem in the North East, problem in the South-East, so there is no need for another problem in the South-South. It is good that the elections were held so that Nigerians will know the truth about the polity. If elections are held 20 times, PDP will win.”
During the Presidential Election on February 25, 2023, Wike and his co-traitors abandoned the course of progress and national interest, and through a combination of trickery and gangsterism groveled before Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the APC.
While hiding under the pretext of democracy they became insidious and ruthless enemies of our country. They simply reduced themselves to shameless betrayers in the name of making political capital out of the tensed electoral situation.
They organized acts of sabotage which culminated in the cruel rigging of the said election to the benefit of Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Wike particularly dipped into the valley of treachery.
For him, it was a political suicide not to support the camp of a celebrated drug Lord seeking, with desperation to be the next president of Africa’s most populous nation; how selfishly myopic he reasoned.
What we saw in Rivers State during the Presidential election and subsequent elections leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Wike demonstrated remarkable hatred and malice against democratic sanity and progress in our country. This is the irrefutable proof of his treachery by turning Rivers State into a calabash of blood.
In unleashing his barbaric tactics, Wike played the wicked book of his co-travelers in APC – offered deaths and destruction, subjected the people to abuse and torture, and caused the death of innocent civilians, including some electoral officials, having failed to cow the promoters of excessive wind of change that furiously gripped Nigeria.
We must continue to take a path of even greater surveillance, to support the flame of real change in the polity energetically by organizing ourselves so that we can take out the current tyranny – our revolutionary spirits must grow steadily.
Our mission is to overthrow the enemies of our country, by using the instrumentality of democratic process, via true and fair elections. Seeing the so-called G5 Governors in Aso Rock Presidential Palace recently to pay homage to President Bola Tinubu, they revealed themselves as ruthless collaborators and potent instruments of national shame and calamity.
No doubt, their reputation is in tatters. They are genuine enemies of Nigeria’s progress according to Kaduna Nzeogwu – agents of terror, arbitrariness, corruption and violators of democratic tenets.
By supporting Bola Tinubu’s thugs, whose hands are drenched in the blood of Nigeria’s patriots during the February 25, 2023 Presidential election, and turning their loaded guns against innocent voters, they have provoked the indignation and discontent of the bulk of the masses of Nigeria.
In our determined efforts to ultimately extirpate venality, corruption, rot and the barbarous yoke of this most unwanted government being foisted on us, extreme vigilance must be our watch word.
If Wike and company represent cannons of injustice today (gang of traitors); tomorrow as patriotic Nigerians, we must continue to represent cannons of justice and freedom in our besieged country.
Nowinta Igbotako, a serial author, peace and conflict resolution expert, @ Nigeria Good Governance Research Centre, can be reached at: nowintaigbotako@gmail.com
