Wike: Now The Rein Is Gone…

W ith the humiliating defeat of one Elvis Chinda in his role as the arrow head of the ‘Bring Wike Down’ campaign, following the ruling last Monday by the Supreme Court of Nigeria, which threw out the suit he had filed to stop Nyesom Wike from contesting the 2019 gubernatorial polls in Rivers State, the coast is now clear for a less encumbered second term run in office for the governor. The last attempt to rein him in by his detractors, has been voided. Until the Monday judgement by the apex court, the moods in the camps of the opposition and Wike’s were defined by their separate expectations. In Wike’s camp for instance, there was hardly any ruffle over the outcome as the entire matter was seen as a mere academic exercise, by a desperate team of opposition sponsored political jobbers. In contrast, however, the same opposition had placed significant premium on the outcome; believing just as a drowning soul at sea clutches a straw in the hope of survival, Wike would lose and face a sudden death for his secondterm dream.
The outcome however turned out to be an anti-climax, as the SC judgement conclusively degraded their enterprise to mere wishful thinking, thereby making them lose their deposit, as gamblers would say. All that is left now, is for Elvis Chinda and his group, to lick their wounds and look up to the future; either whining ruefully with despondency, or striving to catch some of the goodwill offered by the governor, through accepting the hand of friendship he had offered all his political opponents, during his inauguration on May 29 , 2019.
With the benefit of hindsight, it should have been clear to Elvis Chinda and his co-travelers that the subject matter of the suit they pursued with so much gusto, was a wild goose chase and mission in futility. For the purpose of clarification, this particular, ill-fated enterprise of ‘Bring Wike Down’ commenced in 2015 when the said Elvis Chinda along with other co-travellers, filed a suit in court alleging the ineligibility of Nyesom Wike to contest that year’s guber polls. Following the failure of the bid at that time, the same man relaunched his agenda in 2018 at the high court. With a fresh loss at the high court, Chinda approached the Court of Appeal which granted him a favourable order. However, following a series of incongruities with his case, the matter went to the Supreme Court where the judgement of the Appeal Court was reversed, thus, giving Wike a clean bill of eligibility, to contest and run for the elections. The rest is history as Wike had since contested, won the elections and is on a steady pace into his second term of office.
Incidentally, the manifestly invidious motive behind the just failed eligibility suit against Wike revives reminiscences of the governor’s many similarly targeted battles both in courts and elsewhere that were intended to derail him, during his first term in office. Just like the current effort at scuttling his aspiration failed, the series of obstacles and proverbial ‘banana peels’ that were laid on his path throughout much of that first term could not stop him. His victories in the two terms have not only demonstrated eloquently the secure position the governor occupies in the political terrain of the Rivers State, but signpost the hope of stability in tenure, throughout the span of the second term.
It is this expectation of stability that offers so much promise for moving the Rivers State to the next level, as driven by the governor’s vison and enterprise. He had in his first term demonstrated his capacity and dexterity at delivering democracy dividends. His second term commenced with a well laid out course of action, which captures the mindset of a leader with posterity in mind. Wike, has by past record, demonstrated that he can be trusted with the task of rebuilding the Rivers State.
Yet, just as a tree cannot make a forest, the task of rebuilding the Rivers State cannot be executed by the governor alone. Governors including Wike, are not magicians but rather serve as rallying points for their constituencies with respect to articulating a common vision for their people and supervising the deployment of the common wealth of the people for the actualisation of such vision. This is where all lovers of the River State remain duty bound to rally around him for the good of all.