G5: Wike’s Strategy, Their Tragedy

The G5 of the Peoples Democratic Party may have become a liability of sort for President Bola Tinubu going by the frequent visits of the group to Aso Rock Villa almost on a daily basis.

In the last few days, the group has visited Villa more than three times, ostensibly to remind President Tinubu the non existent promissory note they are now claiming to have extracted from him before the February 25 presidential election. But unknown to the group led by former Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, they may have outlived their usefulness.

Wike also seems to have lost his usual bravura and bragacciddo.

Moreso, without prejudice to the outcome of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, the election had been won and lost. And unlike the Atiku/Saraki led G5 group that fused into the All Progressives Congress in 2014, Wike seems to have led his friends to hold the short end of the stick.

Apart from Seyi Makinde who managed to win his second term, Wike and his friends are on the slippery ground into political oblivion.

In Abia, Victor Ikpeasu lost everything; his senate seat and governorship to the rampaging Labour Party led by Alex Otti.

In Enugu, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi’s pirrich victory may be shortlived. He won the governorship for his successor, Peter Mbah, but lost the senate seat.

In Benue, Samuel Ortom has become a political orphan. Rv father Hycienth Allia, a Roman Catholic priest didn’t spare him. He won the governorship and also deny him the senate seat, a third of the state he governed for eight years.

In Rivers State, Wike may soon face the reality as his successor, Similaye Fubara, has shown that he will be his own man. And he’s not likely to allow Wike to use Rivers’ PDP to negotiate again.

Sources close to President Tinubu maintain that Wike and his group are not likely to get any good patronage because of their poor strategy.

According to the insider, what Wike and his friends did was akin to political harahiri.

“How would you allow people who chose to remain in their party to weaken it for opposition occupy sensitive positions knowing fully well that they will like pull the same joker if their interest is threatened again?”

He said Wike and his friends would have moved into the APC, though the Electoral Act 2022 would have been their albatross as all their candidates that have the PDP tickets would have lost.

In 2003, the Governors on the platform of the defunct Alliance for Democracy, AD, Bisi Akande, Segun Osoba, Niyi Adebayo, Adebayo Adefarati and Lam Adesina of Osun, Ogun, Ekiti , Ondo and Oyo states negotiated away their Presidential candidate for Chief Olusegun Obasanjo of the PDP who turned around and moved against them.

The rest is now history. The only survivor then, now President Tinubu warned of the dire consequences of their actions, but they won’t listen.

Even, in 2014, when Atiku, Saraki, Kwankwaso and co left PDP for the APC, it wasn’t rosy. Most of them had to struggle for positions. Saraki Senate’s presidency was the most turbulent in the history of the country even when he defected to the PDP.

Now, Wike is in quandary of what will happen next. Even Makinde must act fast and move to the APC for him to get anything tangible, otherwise, he’s own his own.It’s not certain that Tinubu will leave his favourite for the governorship, Adebayo Adelabu, the governorship candidate, Teslim Folarin and Zaccheus Adedeji, a top politician from Iwo Ate to placate Makinde if he chose to remain in the PDP.

President Tinubu said that much before his swearing-in in Port Harcourt, when Wike was making a demand of him. ” I owe you nothing”, Tinubu fired back.

For now, the G5 seems to have come to wit ends. And that explains why Makinde while briefing the media after another visit to Villa yesterday harped on justice, equity and fairness. Whose justice, equity and fairness are we discussing here?

Former governor of Ekiti State, Ayo Fayose suffered similar fate in the past. After his unceremonious exist from the government house in 2006, he lost in a bid to install his lackey and in the process, he teamed up the Action Congress then to fight the Engr Segun Oni led PDP in the state.

He succeeded with Kayode Fayemi reclaiming his mandate, but all promises made to him were not fulfilled. In 2011, he moved to Labour Party to realise his senatorial ambition, but lost scandalously to the AC candidate. He later returned to the PDP when it dawned on him that he was on a wild goose chase before he was reelected in 2014.