By Abraham Ogbodo
Your Excellency Sir,
Let me start by warning that I am not going to be too nice. I am out to tell you the truth. And it is a bitter truth Mr. President. Tell us, who, between you and Mr. Nyesom Wike is the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? This is not to say that I am unaware of the events of Saturday, February 25, 2023. On that day, Nigerians voted for you as their President. They did not vote for Nyesom Wike who only got into the executive scheme because you appointed him the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. The only significant point about that appointment was that it did not follow a regular pattern. It was the first time that ministerial portfolio was moved to the deep south since the advent of the FCT on February 3, 1976. Before Wike, the FCT Ministry had run more like the exclusive political and economic zone of Northern Nigeria.
You only used Wike to break a 47-year-old tradition Mr. President.
That is where it ends. The appointment did not add extra content and charge to Wike and the FCT Ministry. Any other person of your choice from the South-south could have been appointed the FCT Minister to break the Northern hegemony at that level of the central government. In other words, nothing outside your discretion, specially recommended Wike for the appointment. You simply favoured him in exercising your presidential prerogatives, one of which is the freedom to choose ministers. But from the way Wike has managed himself and his office, it looks more like he is the one doing you a favour for accepting to serve as a Minister in your government.
Perhaps, the fact of being the first from Southern Nigeria to serve in that capacity is getting into his head. Wike has appropriated the conquest and kicking in all directions as if he appointed himself the FCT Minister and not your good self. Mr. President, all well-meaning Nigerians have been asking you to call Nyesom Wike to order. To let him understand that he is a public servant and not a public master. You have not budged. What is it actually? I cannot understand! His loud talks and attitudes point to the fact that he is untouchable. Is that really the case Mr. President?
This same man led you in the nose to breach the constitution in a manner that made late Idi Amin of Uganda look like a better democrat even in 2025. Without weighing the pros and cons for good judgment, you rushed to declare a needless state of emergency in Rivers State as if such declaration was a routine presidential speech on Independence Day that didn’t require extra care or constitutional guidance to deliver effectively.
As you know Mr. President, perception is reality. The perception out here is that there is something deeper between you and Wike. You may have to say what it is. I don’t want to know the power cult that both of you subscribe to. I am more concerned about the public reading that the irrepressible Jagaban, is for once, and for whatever reason, looking contained by a man called Nyesom Wike. Ayo Fayose, former Governor of Ekiti State has actually said that you cannot sacrifice Wike for anybody or anything. Even if this is true, I cannot understand Fayose’s stake in orchestrating it. He is talking as if everything about Wike is a beautiful advertisement of rare virtues that you cannot do without. This is the kind of endorsement that makes Wike’s head to swell like Christmas balloon. I wouldn’t know if Fayose is close to you sir. If he is, tell him to stop calling a cow his brother because he wants to eat meat. If he is not, ask any of your outpost men in Ado-Ekiti or Ibadan, who speak his kind of language, to advise him that the polity is too charged for gangsterism or the intrigues of stomach infrastructure.
People are saying that Wike is trying to follow your footsteps in Lagos. I get their point though even as I struggle to weave a defence on your behalf. I tell them that you are not a John Player street or free dancer who panders to every drum beat. You only step forth when the arena is right and the drumbeats are in synchrony for a perfect performance. When the elements are incomplete and the prospect of a bad dance is real, you remain backstage. This is why even your enemies sometimes hide their resentment to profess your tactical superiority in the middle of a battle. You understand when to whisper in a conversation and when to shout. For instance, you did not shout to lose your voice over Fashola. Those of us in Lagos knew you never wanted him to have a second tenure as governor of Lagos State. But the dynamics refused to sway in your direction. As a wise man, you simply retreated to fight another day.
Even with Akinwumi Ambode, you never went crazy like a bulldozer. You did not sign-off from your beat for 17 days to stage crusades in Ikorodu, Badagry, Epe, Oshodi, Ajegunle, Okokomaiko and everywhere in Lagos to stop Ambode. Sir, you truly deserve your flowers, and I am all too ready to offer them to you. In doing the wrong things, you still find some way to exhibit class to earn praises and unravel as the unbeatable Jagaban Borgu. You have mastered the art of reaching out to the undertaker to take-up your dirty jobs. Much of the work to stop Ambode from governing Lagos State for another four years after the first four years, was handled by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, then the national chairman of the APC. While every objective witness of the APC’s governorship primary that dethroned Akinwumi Ambode and enthroned Babajide Sanwo-Olu, was shouting blue murder, Comrade Oshiomhole was very comfortable in his corner affirming the sanctity of the process.
This is also where people are worried about your relationship with Wike. They are also seeing a contract with an undertaker to kill and bury democracy in Nigeria. The undertaker is like the executioner. He is emotionally detached. Once contracted for a hit, nothing recalls him except the voice of the principal. So far and good, Wike in the context of the politics of 2027 and the continued survival of democracy in Nigeria, has operated with absolute detachment. He tells everybody, or better still, demonstrates to everybody, that he has a commission from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to kill and also direct the funeral of democracy in Nigeria. This makes him an executioner and undertaker at the same time. Quite a brutal blend sir. He is eminently focused on the job and less mindful about the voices of protest around him. The position is that he is waiting for you to decommission him.
Mr. President, this is where we are with Nyesom Wike, your Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. Time has come to debunk the impression that you are committed to killing Democracy, using Wike as a hitman. Like the main character, Jackal, in Frederick Forsyth’s Day Of The Jackal, Wike is powered by a paid passion to deliver at all costs. He is oblivion of the changing realities around him. He doesn’t even know that there is a new level of national emergency that is higher than the one that happened in Rivers State and any that had ever happened in the country since Independence, which you are trying to solve. The prospect of some big outside power re-colonising is getting more real by the day. A highly unpredictable international bully is on the loose and on your neck to demonstrate that democracy in Nigeria is not a demonstration of the madness of decimating the country’s Christian population. This should worry you more than a Wike, Mr. President.
Wike should be effectively stopped from acting like a Jackal. In the award-winning fiction, The Day of The Jackal, the secret service operators on the trail of Jackal have had him cut off and encircled, and only waiting to catch him in the act. But the assassin refuses to backdown. The instruction to discontinue can only come from the OAS, the dissident paramilitary and terrorist group, that contracted him to take down General Charles de Gaulle. Jackal continued into failure. He did fire the essential shot, but failed to meet his purpose, thus marking the grand termination of the terminator.
The options are very slim Mr. President. I hear that about $9 million has been paid to a lobby group in the US to work upon the systems – persons and institutions – over there with a view to creating a common understanding. President Trump and the White House have to be convinced about your sincerity of purpose Mr. President. This is far more important than the continued cultivation of Nyesom Wike. Claims about trust stick faster by manifestation than they do by proclamation. Even in theology, repentance or what we call born-again in Nigeria, is manifested and not proclaimed. Logic is built by reinforcement and not detraction. If you say yes and no at the same time, you will remain flat. And so, in addition to other efforts, including the $9 million dole-out, there is need to manifest repentance and cut off all channels of sin.
Wike has reportedly said that he will be finished politically if Fubara is allowed to return as Governor in 2027. What if he finishes for good and Nigeria to survive? Or is he saying that Nigeria should be finished for him to survive? The Bible teaches us to cut off any part of our body that leads us to trouble. Extrapolated, the Presidency has a responsibility to cut off any part of itself that is bringing trouble to the country. Wike looks like a part that needs to be cut off now. He is in the habit of second guessing you to extract your endorsement of his actions. That also defines him as your hitman. It is a burden you must discharge now, Mr. President. Delay may prove catastrophic.
Thanks and God guide and protect you.
