Opinion
PETER OBI/PDP > The First Kiss
PDP/PeterObi> The First Kiss
By Sam Omatseye
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s dilemma about embracing Pitobi is not PDP’s alone. It is also an Obidient quandary. The LP dilemma over PDP merger is not LP’s alone, it is also a PDP’s. It is the jigsaw puzzle of Nigerian politics. It was created by PDP itself.
But it is too simplistic to put it that way. We saw it last week when PDP said it was on the cusp of healing itself, and one of its formulas is to bring everyone home, including Kwankwaso and Pitobi. Like Medea in Euripides’s rendition of the Greek tragedy, they are looking at what might have been. Before she slaughtered her two sons, Medea avenged her traitor and power-crazed husband Jason by murdering his new wife and her conniving father, King Creon, who snatched Jason from Medea. Medea looked back at the time of her love with Jason with an unblended alchemy of fury and tenderness. Memory drove her to a witchcraft of envy and murder and regicide.
PDP spokesperson spoke with sumptuous nostalgia on how they might have trounced Tinubu and his APC if they had come together. Kola Ologbodiyan probably read in his mind the scripture when David eulogized how “good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity.” Only that the precious oil of the election poured on their head did not reach down to Aaron’s beard before it gave them a splitting headache. They were already three persons. This trinity had no unity.
They are like divorcees with the fantasy of their first kiss. The fantasy is sweet, but the reality is like quinine without the cure. Between the first kiss and divorce, they had blisters and sores, fought bedbugs of cash in the other room, flew dinner plates across the sitting room after equity failed in sharing it, lied to their children about what they shared, kissed lovers across the aisle in furtive hours. They want to cancel all that memory to reenact the hour of the first kiss?
That is the problem with PDP. The first kiss never comes back, like Chekov’s short story of a woman who had a kiss in the dark in a party and spent all her life wondering about it and who had kissed her. Neither Pitobi nor Kwankwaso’s NNPP are sure they can reenact the bliss of that romantic kiss.
They hope to return to the first kiss believing that they are like water into water and no one can know their differences anymore. Old things have passed away. Behold all things have become new.
First, they must stop lying to themselves. One, Pitobi has outgrown who he was when he was a candidate who rebelled against PDP and picked up LP ticket. Since then, he has amassed a big and rambunctious following, and that makes him a force in the political sweepstakes. How formidable that force is today is doubtful. It may have retreated into a rump. But it is still far bigger than Pitobi ever could have been under the umbrella. During the election, PDP lamented the collapse of its unity as stormy Nyesom Wike turned the party upside down. Now, the story is not different. Pitobi did not relent, after building a coalition of faith and tribe in southern and central Nigeria. He hoped he had enough to pull off a win.
It was an illusion that political Mathematician Babatunde Raji Fashola(SAN) laid bare as a prophecy. But Kola Ologbodiyan and Professor Pat Utomi goaded their candidates on. Fashola’s Math as prophecy came into reality because, like Oedipus in Sophocles’ play, they did not listen. They saw victory in a cloud. They were afflicted by what literary critic G.D. Killam called “insistent fatality,” in characterizing Okonkwo in Things fall Apart. They saw death and careened into it like a drug.
Since things fell apart, PDP has been trying to bring everyone home. But it is important for them to know who they are now. Pitobi does not know. He has diluted the religious part of his Obedient movement. The Tinubu administration has allayed fears and quieted ballyhoos about an apocalypse about the Muslim-Muslim ticket, with a cabinet and appointment profile that undermines any allegation of pious bigotry.
So, if Pitobi goes to PDP, will he become a deputy to the party’s point man? That will not suit the feminine-voiced Anambrarian. That will, to all intents and purposes, be the Nunc dimittis of the Obedient movement. PDP forgets that the reason the Obedient movement was born was because, one, they wanted a party to fix their dilemma of southern and central Nigerian Christians not voting for a Fulani man and a Yoruba man. They did not want Tinubu, a Yoruba, and did not want the moral cross of voting a Fulani man in a prostitute like Atiku for another possible eight years. For this big chunk of the Obidient cause, Pitobi was not a candidate, or even a person, he was an excuse as a cause. But the excuse has grown into a myth for its core followers, many of whom dumped Kanu as a cultic hero (almost as sacred as Ojukwu) for a more practical one in Pitobi.
PDP will have a lot of problem blending that crowd into its own party. Again, there were the Endsars component and ill-digested radicals and lawyers who clasped to their bosom the same Pitobi who they had associated with a perverse elite before his born-again LP sojourn. How will they blend? I can hear them echo Apostle Paul, “Come ye from among them and be ye separate.”
But that makes the Obidient crowd too small to fight alone. Wike is the immediate nemesis of Ologbodiyan’s party. Last week, the FCT minister warned the Bauchi governor and other interloper PDP governors that he has the capacity to undermine peace in their states. For sure, they cannot expel Wike form the party. Unlike Ganduje,who had ward miscues, Wike is still a stalwart of Rivers State PDP. He put the party echelon on notice last week for a reason. He is capable of determining the presidential candidate of the party next election cycle. Remember, but for Tambuwal, he was on the path to victory in the last PDP primary.
It shows how powerful he can still be. Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed, the hypocrite who called for removal of fuel subsidies in the open during Buhari’s time, suddenly became a critic of its removal because he wants to run for president. The megalomaniac, who responded to this column the last time I ribbed him, has been quiet over Wike’s jibe.
What it means is that we are back to Fashola’s mathematical prophecy. Their followers are only going to line behind them. And as troubled as the APC may be today, it is more united than its foes, and a house divided against itself must beware of its wobbly legs.
Before any of them can unite, they must decide who is guilty. For without guilt, there is no reconciliation. The issue with Nigerian political class is that we allow guilt to fester without atonement. If these groups reconcile, there must be penance. Who will do penance if Wike reconciles with Bauchi Governor? Or if Pitobi goes back to PDP? Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote the Oresteia trilogy, the first was about guilt known as Agamemnon, the second about atonement known as The Libation Bearers and the third is about absolution and known as Eumenides. When have we had a major reconciliation in our politics that evokes absolution? I don’t know when. Our politicians don’t reconcile. They embrace like pigs. We keep a narrative of patchworks that turn back to haunt us. Hence, we have parties without philosophies. The people inherit their lies and illusions. Sir Ivor Jennings had Nigerians in mind when he asserted that, “the people cannot decide until somebody decides who are the people.” Pitobi must be wary to make a decision like a merger for the Obidients. He risks losing them. If he joins PDP, he would have decided who his new people are, and they may not be called Obidients.
Shakespeare advice, “to thyself be true.” In a satire of class and manners, the great Oscar Wilde penned the play, The Importance of Being Earnest, in which lovestruck men try to change their identities in order to marry two women who only want to marry men named Earnest. In the end, saying truth to themselves matters.
Nor is identity so easy in politics anywhere. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Catholic France was defending Protestant Netherlands against its Catholic enemies and Catholic Spain and Germany pitched tents with Protestants called the Huguenots in France against the Catholic French king. And Oliver Cromwell, a Protestant who slaughtered many Catholics at home, made alliance with the great Jules Mazarin, French Catholic leader. If you compromise faith, you can compromise anything. We saw Pitobi the other day in the shadows of a mosque.
The story of PDP and Pitobi’s LP will make a great study in crisis of love and marriage in politics.
If their first was luscious, the next will be Judas kiss.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation
Opinion
Opinion: Northern Elders Outrage Over Uromi Killing: Is the North Alone in Tolerating Enough?
By Perez Bibaikefie
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has strongly condemned the recent killing of northern hunters in Uromi, Edo State, describing the act as barbaric and unacceptable. The group, through its spokesperson, Professor Abubakar Jika Jiddere, issued a statement expressing deep concern over what they view as persistent violence against northerners.
According to a report by Daily Trust on March 29, the NEF asserted that the North has endured repeated attacks from certain parts of the South and declared that such incidents must stop. The group issued a list of demands, including the immediate arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the attack, payment of compensation to the victims’ families, and a formal apology from the Edo State Government. They insisted that justice must be served publicly to prevent future occurrences.
The NEF also called on both the Edo State Government and the Federal Government to take decisive action within fourteen days, warning that failure to do so could force the North to seek justice through other means. They urged authorities to ensure accountability and uphold peace in the country.
However, the killings in Uromi have sparked broader concerns about violence across Nigeria. Critics argue that the North has not been the only region affected by insecurity. Many communities in the South have also suffered from attacks, including those linked to Fulani herdsmen and armed groups who have invaded farmlands and highways.
A firsthand account from a victim of such violence recounts an attack on February 22, 2025, where a group of six men, including the writer, was ambushed and robbed. This incident adds to the growing frustration among Nigerians who feel that security threats are not limited to one region but are a nationwide crisis.
With tensions rising, some voices are calling for a national dialogue on the future of Nigeria, with suggestions of restructuring or regional separation to prevent further conflicts. As the country grapples with these pressing issues, the urgency for security reforms and justice for all victims of violence remains paramount.
Photo Credit: Dailytrust
“The more you look, is the less you see” – Max Romeo and the Upsetters.
In Nigeria, politics is a complex and intriguing race to be ahead of others – a conspiratorial race mainly geared towards a politician’s clout directly linked to the resources they can amass, and attract for their constituents. Only in Nigeria, someone who took fourth in a gubernatorial electoral contest was declared winner by the Supreme Court. Only in Nigeria, one who did not participate in a party primary election was declared the flag bearer of a political party, and subsequently won in the general election to become a Senator. Lest I forget, unlike Nelson Mandela, who after his release from prison, aspired to the Presidency of his country, South Africa, campaigned vigorously across the country and won the election; in Nigeria, a candidate of a political party who was in prison at the time of the campaigns and on election day, so could not campaign, and participate physically in the election, won the Senatorial election. These are impossibilities that can only be attained in the land of “anything is possible and achievable” – Nigeria; how laughable!
In every Nigerian administration, alongside the formal cabinet sanctioned by law and recognized by the populace, there exists a clandestine “kitchen cabinet”; not referring to the actual furniture! In recent times, numerous political analysts have pointed out the presence of such a “kitchen cabinet” within President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration. It is purported that President Tinubu leads this covert group, which notably includes Senate President Godswill Akpabio and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, whom they mockingly label as embodying “the three arms of government – executive, legislature, and judiciary respectively.” Additionally, the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajambiala, wields substantial influence, serving as the vital link to the President himself.
These individuals wield such tremendous authority that their words and actions seem to carry the weight of law – they have become unrestrained and dictatorial! Unchecked power resembles a drunken driver, oblivious to when to slow down. Likewise, unrestricted power can be likened to a bomb in the hands of a madman; such a figure will not only wreak havoc upon others but will inevitably bring about their self-destruction. Nevertheless, it is crucial to remember that unchecked power is akin to a storm; despite its fierce onslaught, with thunder and lightning, it will eventually yield to sunshine and tranquility in due time.
What many believed began as a benign “we we” arrangement in Abuja is morphing into a frenzied scramble for resources akin to fowls fighting over scraps, each peck going directly into its own gullet, oblivious to the fact that other fowls need nourishment too. Wike may have been one of those who constructed the elaborate setup, helped organize festivities, and even contributed Rivers State resources to the ongoing “Owambe Party” in Abuja. However, he ought to realize that indulging excessively in feasting, drinking, and dancing more than the original architects of the gathering will lead him to be perceived as a glutton and a reckless drunkard, ultimately barred from returning home on the same flight by the Capone’s Bouncers. Indeed, scrutiny is upon him; they are acutely aware that one who would betray a sibling for a mere plate of porridge would not hesitate to sell out an outsider for a handful of coins.
“Political Intrigues and the Fallacy of Loyalty in Nigeria: The Wike Conundrum”, encapsulates the fascinating political interplay of cunning, deception, and treachery taking place in Abuja. While Nyesom Wike performs the dirty work for the Capone in Aso Rock, Akpabio, in tandem with Gbajambiala, seizes the rewards, all the while the mastermind “pretends to be sleeping” – echoing the passive demeanor of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Effective leadership requires a calm demeanor, respect, and the capacity to unify and lead impartially. In stark contrast, a bitter leadership style fails to foster healing and harmony; instead, it often cultivates negativity, resulting in failure and ultimately, self-destruction.
Is it truly mere happenstance that the appointed Administrator for Rivers State originates from Akwa-Ibom, Akpabio’s own state? Is it just an accident that the headquarters of the newly established South-South Development Commission, SSDC., recently enacted into law, is positioned in Akwa-Ibom? Is it simply coincidence that the inaugural Chairman of the SSDC is also a native of Akwa-Ibom? Is it a fluke that the Tai Police Training School designated for Rivers State has been relocated to Akwa-Ibom?
It is undeniable that Wike’s obstinate rejection of the sage counsel and heartfelt appeals from distinguished Rivers individuals and national figures, such as Siminalayi Fubara, to pursue peace and open dialogue with the Siminalayi Funara administration, has resulted in strife within his own State. This discord ultimately prompted President Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in Rivers. The selection of Vice Admiral Ekwe Ibas, who is not a Rivers native, has laid bare the State’s sensitive affairs to external observers, who would not have gained access to such confidential matters had Wike prioritized harmony. In Nigeria, where political maneuvering often serves as leverage, the potential for wielding hidden knowledge against him and the State in the future is not far-fetched.
Evaluating the consequences stemming from the suspension of democratic governance due to the emergency rule, alongside the actions and inactions of both the Federal and Rivers State governments, it is my assessment that Wike has made one of the most detrimental political choices in his career. He seems to have been utilized and subsequently cast aside, losing significant ground in the Rivers power dynamics and at “the top.” “When a king loses grip of his throne, his followers will look for a new throne.” It is my hope that the emergency rule being hailed by the “Wikeists” will ultimately serve the people of Rivers well, and that their celebratory mood will endure the test of time.
There is a saying among the Ijaw that goes, “etei mene yei me, emu weri mene bra ke, enanamo yei kpo ebamu weri mene.” This conveys the wisdom that as one criticizes the partner they are parting with, they will also inevitably cast aspersions on the one they are preparing to join with.
Wike is notably unpredictable; he engages in disparagement and ridicule of any individual or community that dares to disagree with him, despite the reality that many of those he derides, particularly within the Ijaw community, are in fact among his greatest benefactors and supporters.
I feel a measure of pity for him because one who chooses to demolish their own foundation for the sake of outsiders will find themselves without a shelter when hardship arises!
In conclusion, the political landscape in Nigeria, characterized by intrigue and manipulation, mirrors a battleground where alliances shift and loyalties are often fleeting. As the unfolding drama around Nyesom Wike illustrates, the struggles for power and recognition can transform even valued leaders into pawns in a larger game dictated by self-interested actors. The pervasive sense of betrayal and self-aggrandizement highlights the complexities of governance in a nation where the principles of unity and solidarity are regularly undermined by personal ambitions. Ultimately, Wike’s predicament serves as a poignant reminder of the dangers of turning against one’s own constituency for the transient allure of power, revealing that in the turbulent arena of Nigerian politics, one’s fate is often dictated not by merit but by shifting allegiances and hidden agendas. It underscores the necessity for integrity and genuine leadership, for without these, the cycle of betrayal and chaos is destined to repeat, leaving communities fragmented and their leaders adrift in the stormy seas of political opportunism.
Where is Nyesom Wike, Lere Olayinka?!
Hon. Prince Augustine Edumogiren writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State.
March 31, 2025.
I once believed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was a democrat—civilized, experienced, and truly the Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But his recent nationwide address on the Rivers State crisis has proven otherwise.
In his speech, Tinubu failed to call his minister, Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, to order. He did not even mention his name. Instead, all the blame was placed on His Excellency, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, GSSRS, the duly elected Governor of Rivers State. This selective approach makes it clear that Wike is the real Commander-in-Chief, controlling the judiciary, the federal executive, the National Assembly, and all security agencies in Nigeria, while Tinubu merely follows his script.
Is this the democracy Nigerians voted for?
Bola Ahmed Tinubu must remember that just as he was elected, so was His Excellency Governor Siminalayi Fubara, GSSRS. The people of Rivers State spoke through the ballot, and their choice must be respected. Declaring a state of emergency in Rivers State, despite the absence of a crisis, will only confirm that Tinubu is acting on the orders of his true Commander-in-Chief—Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, GSSRS.
If Nigeria is truly a democracy, then why is Governor Fubara being denied the right to present his budget? Why is he being undermined by so-called lawmakers acting on Wike’s directives? And why is the presidency silent on the role of federal institutions in enabling this injustice?
A true leader governs with fairness, neutrality, and respect for the rule of law. But Tinubu has shown that he is more interested in protecting certain individuals than in upholding justice. Democracy must not be sacrificed for personal interests or political vendettas.
Rivers State deserves justice. The people deserve peace. And history will not forget those who stood against the will of the people.
I stand with Sir Siminalayi Fubara, GSSRS, Executive Governor of Rivers State.
Sir Henry Tobin, JP. is the former Coordinator, 5th Mobile Parliament, Central Zone, Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide
Concerned Citizen of the Ijaw Nation