BY YUSUFU SHEHU USMAN mni. We must give it to Wike as an enigmatic and perhaps an intelligent political character of modern times.

Wike still professes to be a member of the PDP and a highly powerful and influential one at that.

He is in full and total control of the PDP in Rivers State with his political tentacles spread across the party in many other States.

He enjoys such a huge and even larger than life presence in the structure that constitutes the PDP.

Yet Nyesom Wike is an honorable Minister in the ruling APC and he has been so chosen and anointed by none other in the APC hierarchy but the President himself, who is also the leader and alter ego of the APC as the party in power at the center.

It’s Wike that fought and gallantly defeated the PDP in the Presidential election and delivered Rivers State to President Tinubu with a very significant margin of victory in the 2023 election.

He played the devil’s advocate and also succeeded in defeating the same APC in the governorship election and successfully installed Simi of the PDP ad the governor of Rivers State, again with a wide margin of votes.

Now even as a Minister in the APC Government, Wike still maintains his membership of the PDP and has not YET joined the APC.

However, judging from recent events unfolding in Rivers State, it will be just a matter of time before Wike will put his spanner in the works again, to dismantle the PDP political structure he built, nourished and planted in the State.

Rivers State may well be on the line to controlled by the APC, with Wike as the chief game changer.

It’s not too far to see that Simi may be seamlessly impeached and removed as the governor of Rivers State as the APC members of the House of Assembly now have the constitutional requirement of two thirds majority to successfully impeach Simi.

The plan may be for Simi’s successor to defect from the PDP to the APC, which would guarantee a total control of both the Legislature and the Executive in Rivers State.

Wike’s ultimate plan will be to install the APC structure in Rivers State at all levels, before he finally defects as a big masquerade to completely take charge as the undisputed political godfather of Rivers Politics.

For inexplicable reasons, the PDP appears powerless to stop Wike and because of his firm roots and strong influence in the party, the PDP is watching helplessly as Wike is causing the Party grievous hurt and destruction.

I believe that all these things are happening to reshape the national political equation ahead of the 2027 Presidential election.

By 2027, the APC would have taken a very firm root in Rivers State with the handsome possibility of extending it’s machinery of power across other States of the Niger Delta region, all because of Wike’s political ingenuity.

Wike has severally challenged the PDP to expel him if they dare. But they have not been able to do so and even if they do now, I think it’s very much belated, because Wike has already done incalculable damage to the party at both the national and Rivers State levels

Wike has established himself as a political enigma and a politician in a class of his own and a character and trajectory of political jiggery pockery unprecedented in recent political history of modern NIgeria.

Yusuf Shehu Usman, mni