How did Wike lose Odili?,- By Kehinde Yusuf

*Photo: Barrister Nyesom Wike*

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; …

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom: …”

(From William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 116”)

Constancy is the mark of true love. This is the key message of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. One of the events for which this message has relevance is the current souring of the relationship between two former Rivers State Governors – Dr. Peter Odili and Barrister Nyesom Wike.

Dr. Odili was the Governor of the State from 29 May, 1999 to 29 May, 2007 and Barrister Wike was Governor from 29 May, 2015 to 29 May, 2023. Barrister Wike is currently the Honourable Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Dr. Odili is 75 years old and Barrister Wike is 56. Moreover, Dr. Odili’s 72-year-old wife, Justice Mary Odili, who is a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, is also of key significance in regard to the relationship between the two former Governors of the State.

At the lecture delivered by Professor Julius Ihonvbere on 25 May, 2023, to mark Wike’s imminent end of tenure, Governor Wike said as follows about Dr. Odili and his wife: “One of the things that I can say, and I would continue to say it, that guided me before I was sworn in as the governor in 2015, I would not forget that, and which is what I have also told my successor. Dr. Peter Odili wrote out certain things and gave to me that these should be my guide; that he had made his own mistakes and he didn’t want me to make those mistakes. And I took that seriously and this is what has led me or led us to where we are today. So, Dr. Peter Odili, I sincerely thank you and your wife.”

Tracing the benefactor and mentor roles that Dr. Odili and his wife had been playing in the lives of Wike and his wife far back in time, Governor Wike also said on 16 May, 2022: “Any day that I would make Dr. Odili and his family to cry, God, don’t allow me to grow. These people suffered blackmail, everything, because of people like us. Sir, sir, I want to tell you today, I want to tell you today before people here. I would never be alive to make you cry and your wife. I will never do it. … I will never abandon you and your family. See where I am today … I’m a governor. … Where would I have been but for you and your wife?”

Considering the reverence in which he has held the Odilis, Wike has been cited as the epitome of political gratitude. In fact, in a 9 June, 2023 WhatsApp discussion of political mentees who had betrayed their political mentors, or those who had tried to edit their political mentors out of the mentees’ political history, Wike attracted the following compliment: “In contrast, former Governor Nyesom Wike is legendary in his constant appreciation of and loyalty to those who helped him to fame. For example, he acknowledged and tried to immortalise the Odilis at every opportunity he had.” This difficult-to-earn reputation of Wike is now at risk of being completely destroyed, because of the Minister’s obsession with cutting Fubara to size.

In what seems to be a gratuitous insult, Wike committed the Odilis to anonymity. He said as follows using innuendo on 25 March, 2024: “I hear they have a Judicial Consultant now who says they should not worry, [and that] as far as she’s there nothing would happen. That’s their business. … I built the cancer centre … and I named it after one man. I built Judicial Institute and I named it after one woman.” “A Judicial Consultant” and “one woman”, here, appear to be jibes taken at Justice Odili (whom he had been calling “Mummy” or “My Mother” before now) and “one man” refers to Dr. Odili. Wike also uses certain derogatory expressions which as a consequence of ambivalence could be perceived as referring to the Odilis. Here, Wike seems to disregard the Yoruba proverbial admonition that whatever part of the body you designate as head, you shouldn’t use it to step on the ground (“Ibi tí a bá pè lórí ẹnìkan kìí fi í tẹlẹ.”)

In fact, Wike told journalists on 2 April, 2024 as follows in response to the question whether he still had a good relationship with Dr. Odili: “As it is today, politically, we don’t have. We don’t work together [due to political differences].” He said further: “In politics, you see, for me, we have finished with this stage. It does not mean that in the next stage you will be in the same camp. No. He took a decision. I took a decision.” This raises the questions, “Do favours have expiry dates beyond which it becomes ethical to undermine or attack one’s erstwhile benefactors? Do favours expire?” There are restrained ways of fighting one’s mentors. Engaging in public verbal attack of your mentor closes the door to reconciliation, because, as a Yoruba proverb puts it, “Ẹyin lohùn; t’óbá tí fọ́ kò ṣeé kó mọ́.” (‘Words are eggs; once broken, they cannot be collected into a whole again.’)

On 24 March, 2024, Wike referred to his opponents in the Wike-Fubara feud as “political harlots” and “political charlatans”, and assured his own supporters as follows: “I will continue to defeat them. … In Ikwerre tradition, when you start beating the drum of wrestling, it’s not that time the real wrestlers will come out. … The real wrestlers will come in later, towards the end.” Wike’s self-portrayal as an unbeatable wrestler calls to mind this story on page 4 of Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God:  “Once there was a great wrestler whose back had never known the ground. He wrestled from village to village until he had thrown every man in the world. Then he decided that he must go and wrestle in the land of the spirits, and become champion there as well. He went, and beat every spirit that came forward. Some had seven heads, some ten; but he beat them all. His companion who sang his praise on the flute begged him to come away, but he would not, his blood was roused, his ear nailed up. Rather than heed the call to go home he gave a challenge to the spirits to bring out their best and strongest wrestler. So they sent him his personal god, a little wiry spirit who seized him with one hand and smashed him on the stony earth.”

The narrator continued: “Men of Umuaro, why do you think our fathers told us this story? They told it because they wanted to teach us that no matter how strong or great a man was he should never challenge his chi. … The fly that has no one to advise it follows the corpse into the grave.”

Wike needs to recalibrate. It is hoped that he would not cast himself in the mould of a tragic hero. In literature, it is in the nature of tragic heroes that they possess some inimitable qualities which are undermined by a fundamental flaw in themselves. In fact, litcharts.com, states: “Tragic heroes typically have heroic traits that earn them the sympathy of the audience, but also have flaws or make mistakes that ultimately lead to their own downfall.”

In his feud with Fubara, Wike needs to appreciate the Yoruba view that it’s difficult to fight a younger person. If the older one defeats the younger one, the older person is called “àgbà’yà” (‘Old bully’); and if the younger one defeats the older one, the older person is called “àgbà yẹyẹ́” (‘Big-for-nothing old fellow’). In the ambivalent and complex case of Fubara, though he is the younger one, he has acquired the status of an ‘elder’ by virtue of his position as the incumbent governor. In fact, on 1 April, 2024, at the handing over of a health facility built by Dr. Odili’s foundation to the Rivers State Government, Dr. Odili said to Fubara: “You are the political leader of Rivers State.” It would therefore be a misjudgement to view Fubara from the prism of the pre-29-May-2023 mentee or political godson. As a Yoruba proverb puts it, “Ẹni tí ó bá fi ojú àná wo òkú, ẹbọra á bọọ lásọ.” (‘Anybody who treats a corpse as if it were yesterday’s living human being would be de-clothed by the spirits.’)

Fubara may not yet have become a superlative verbal pugilist, but he’s making considerable progress. On 3 April, 2024, he sent the following warning to those who may be taking his implementation of the presidential peace deal as a sign of weakness: “And I am doing it because of the respect I have for Mr. President. But, let me say it here, if that action that I have accepted to take would be seen as a weakness, I will surprise them. I want this message to go to them.” On 4 April, 2024, in reaction to the outrage of the opposing camp at the original threat, he doubled down by saying: “You have seen how restless they have been since I made one small statement yesterday. We will continue to make them restless. They won’t know where we’re coming from. We will also hit them the way we hit them that day. …We will not allow anybody … to take our meekness for weakness.”  

In an innuendo targeted at Fubara’s enigmatic transformation, Wike warned on 27 March, 2024: “And I tell you in life, be careful of those who don’t talk. … Be careful of people you say they’re very quiet. Be careful. … Be careful of those who … will never say anything.” This is in contrast to the nice things Wike said about the then-incoming Governor Fubara (affectionately called ‘Sim’) on 25 May, 2023: “You know he’s an Accountant. Accountants are very conservative. They don’t spend money anyhow. … But he’s a very good person, I can tell you. … He’s somebody you can rely on. His ‘yes’ is ‘yes’, that I can tell you.”

As the competitive boasts and threats by the war-tested Wike and the simmering Sim continue, it is hoped that the brewing crisis would not boil over and enter the free-style, ruleless, unrestrained “two-fighting” or “roforofo fight” mode in which more erstwhile sacred relationships like the Odili-Wike one would admit impediments, suffer collateral damage and be thrown to the dogs.