A high court in Oyigbo on Friday ordered the Rivers State Chief Judge and the House of Assembly to stop the attempted impeachment of Governor Siminalayi Fubara until further notice. This decision follows the House of Assembly’s third threat to impeach the governor, a pattern many observers are calling an abuse of legislative power and procedure.
What began as an unstoppable impeachment juggernaut against Fubara is thus rapidly collapsing, with lawmakers abandoning the effort one by one until the House could not even sit on Thursday. In stark contrast, Governor Fubara has been receiving endorsements from the APC’s national chairman, secretary, ministers, and other senior party figures; even the vice president said he may be the number two citizen in Nigeria but the leader of the party in his home state, is Governor Babagana Zulum ─ signalling a shift in the centre of gravity of Rivers State politics. The once-feared godfather ─ who’s neither a mainstream PDP nor a peripheral APC member ─ is increasingly isolated, his grip loosening as the governor, through fortuitous happenstances, consolidates legitimacy and national allies rally to his side.
Hans Christian Andersen’s timeless fable of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is instructive here. It’s a parable about vanity, deception, and exposure. An emperor, intoxicated by his own grandeur, parades naked through the streets, convinced he is clothed in splendour, until a child blurts out the truth. Nyesom Wike increasingly resembles that tragic emperor. He struts in richly embroidered robes, projecting authority and invincibility, yet beneath the fabric lies nakedness - self-immolation disguised as spectacle.
Wike’s political persona is a study in contradictions. He is energetic, resilient, and administratively capable; his tenure as governor of Rivers State produced visible infrastructure and an uncanny ability to mobilise resources - an ethos he now replicates in Abuja, regardless of cost. His charisma electrifies gatherings; these are genuine strengths. Yet charisma without restraint devolves into toxicity, and energy without discipline spirals into chaos. His strengths are eclipsed by weaknesses rooted in hubris, impulsivity, profligacy, opportunistic philandering, and coercive loyalty.
Wike’s exaggerated sense of self-worth surfaces in his narratives of privilege. He once claimed his father was a general manager of blue-chip companies ─ a story meant to lend pedigree. Yet those who know him recall a different tale: a young man washing cars to pay school fees and feed himself. The dissonance between fact and fiction reveals narcissism overcompensation, a denial of vulnerability, and a projection of invincibility. Hubris intoxicates him, prompting overreach. His bravado ─ “only my appointor can remove me” ─ betrays deep insecurity. Ministerial tenure is finite; the end will come, whether today, tomorrow, or someday.
Wike’s political philandering is indiscriminate. He flirts with factions, betrays benefactors, and discards alliances the moment their utility wanes. Peter Odili, Rotimi Amaechi, Goodluck Jonathan, and even the PDP itself ─ once patrons, now casualties. This impulse-driven opportunism yields short-term gains but long-term ruin; psychology would label it compulsive opportunism: an inability to sustain loyalty and a compulsion to burn bridges. His loyalists remain not out of conviction but out of self-preservation. His aggression ─ verbal tirades, public attacks on rivals ─ creates a culture of fear. Silence is mistaken for consent, fear masquerades as loyalty. Coercive loyalty is fragile; it evaporates when power wanes. Cracks are already visible.
As Fubara consolidates quiet support and Tinubu calculates long-term stability, Wike’s circle shrinks. Those who once shouted his name now whisper doubts, waiting for the moment when self-preservation demands defection.
The minister’s impulsivity is emblematic. His abrasiveness in public quarrels, reckless insults of party elders and the face-off with naval officer Yerima ─ mirrored later by his son’s bid for a National Assembly seat ─ reveal a man driven by impulse rather than strategy. That’s shamelessness. The Yerima episode was especially telling: a minister berating a junior military officer in public, intoxicated by power and blind to optics. This is called face attack aggression: deliberate assaults on dignity to elevate oneself. Such aggression alienates allies, erodes trust, and inflicts reputational damage.
Speaker Amaewhule and his allies have always pliantly positioned themselves as the ultimate accomplices, biding time as messengers of crises ─ pushing the third impeachment against Governor Fubara and his deputy. In the shadows, Wike nurtures the expectation that, once the impeachment succeeds, the power vacuum will be filled not by a rival faction but by Amaewhule’s ascension to the governorship, allowing him to inherit a state already stripped of its incumbent leadership.
His political style of profligacy - reckless spending of goodwill and alliances as though inexhaustible ─ consumes relationships with abandon, confident that another will appear. He treats loyalty as disposable, discarding allies once their utility diminishes. This is indulgence, not strategy; it is self-immolation, burning one’s own house while strutting in splendour. Those close to him whisper indulgence, of nights blurred by excessive booze. In psychology, substance abuse often co-occurs with narcissistic overcompensation, serving as a coping mechanism for inner conflict. It magnifies impulsivity, erodes discipline, and accelerates decline. For a man already at war with himself, alcohol is an accelerant.
In Nigeria, the irony is sharp: once power changes hands, the veil lifts. Ministers who once strutted in splendour suddenly find their closets opened - Abubakar Malami, Diezani Alison Madueke, Stella Oduah, Babachir Lawal, Ibrahim Magu, to name a few. Power protects, but only temporarily. When it shifts, the emperor’s robe is stripped away. Wike’s embellishments - his father’s supposed pedigree, his in-laws’ imagined wealth - will not withstand scrutiny or stand as an alibi.
Should this not concern Asiwaju Bola Tinubu? Tinubu is a master strategist, a man who calculates decades ahead. He has examined the PDP’s implosion like a pathologist dissecting a cadaver. He knows the party did not die from external opposition but from internal sabotage. He knows who supplied the fuel and who lit the match. He recognises that a man who burns his own father’s house cannot be trusted to guard another’s. Wike may have helped to destabilise the PDP, but that same fire disqualifies him from long-term trust. A man who destroys his father’s house to impress a stranger will one day turn the match inward. Tinubu’s calculus is clear: he will not import the PDP’s madness, its litigious spirit, or its culture of betrayal into the APC.
The tragedy of Wike is that he could be remembered as a builder ─ a charismatic, energetic leader who transformed Rivers State and matched, if not surpassed, Nasir el-Rufai and all his predecessors combined at the FCT. Instead, he risks being memorialised as the emperor whose robe concealed lies, whose arrogance consumed alliances, whose denial blinded him to vulnerability, and whose profligacy led to self-immolation. His end may not be immediate. He remains a minister, retains visibility, and commands fear. Yet the trajectory is downward: isolation grows, bridges are burned, benefactors are decapitated, loyalists persist only out of self-preservation, alcohol accelerates decline, impulsivity alienates allies, and hubris blinds him to limits.
Is this the beginning of the end for Wike? Perhaps. His robe is singed, his house smoulders, and his circle shrinks. Engaged in a war with himself - a conflict that seldom ends in victory - Wike’s dazzling façade now reveals nakedness beneath. I have a personal admiration for him, yet I despise the opportunists who profit from his decline while still urging him onward. His true adversary is not Tinubu, Fubara, Amaechi, or Jonathan; it is Wike himself. Rivers’ politics has entered Wike’s “naked hour”, the moment when bluster no longer intimidates, lawmakers retreat, and governors receive national chieftains while the once-upon-a-time godfather watches from the wings. The emperor who once strutted in splendour now stands exposed, undone not by external enemies but by his own self-destruction. In the end, pity is more fitting than scorn, for his greatest foe is his own undoing.
Credit: Kunle Somorin
