MR ARROGANCE WIKE IS A CROOKED LIAR, ALWAYS INFLATING HIS EGO — AND THE NIGERIAN PRESS IS HIS MAJOR GULLIBLE FOLLOWER
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
The Wike who was supposedly popular enough to dictate where the masses of Cross River would vote in a presidential election could not tell those same Cross River people to vote for the PDP governorship candidate he had invested so much in. Sandy Onor declared his ambition with the support of his long-time friend, then Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State. Cross River went to the APC. The supposed kingmaker could not crown his own friend.
That single fact should have ended the conversation. It did not, because Nyesom Wike is never short of a microphone, and a section of the Nigerian press is never short of an appetite for his grain.
A STUDENT OF STALIN
On 6 September 2026, two weeks before Wike’s latest boast, Dr Alex Ter Adum, former Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice of Benue State, sat before the cameras at a national breakfast television programme in Abuja and read the man correctly. His interview accompanies this article. He said the arrogance of Wike is something to be studied, and that Wike is a student of Stalin.
The description is exact.
There is a story told of Joseph Stalin. It has never been proven, but it has survived for a century because it captures something about the psychology of power. Stalin is said to have summoned his lieutenants, taken a live chicken and plucked it feather by feather while it screamed. He then set the bleeding bird on the floor and scattered a handful of grain. The fowl limped after him, following the very hand that had stripped it. That, he reportedly told them, was how to handle people who did not think for themselves.
Wike appears to have learnt the lesson well.
He plucked the party that made him, shredded it in public for months, and walked away from the wreckage into a ministerial office. Then he scatters grain: a boast here, a “revelation” there, and too many newsrooms limp after him, carrying every word to the front page.
THE LATEST HANDFUL OF GRAIN
On Monday, 21 September, on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout, Wike claimed that the G5 governors allowed Peter Obi to win Edo and Cross River to prevent Atiku from benefiting from the PDP’s strength in those states. His words were: “Our problem will be Atiku.”
By Tuesday, the headlines were screaming “startling disclosure” and “revealed”. Not one of those headlines appeared interested in asking the most elementary question: where is the evidence that five aggrieved governors could simply move millions of voters by instruction?
There is none.
Here is why.
THE GENERALS WHO COULD NOT WIN THEIR OWN SEATS
If the G5 could direct angry voters wherever they pleased, they would have demonstrated that power first in their own contests.
They did not.
Okezie Ikpeazu lost his senatorial election in Abia. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi lost his senatorial election in Enugu. Samuel Ortom lost his senatorial election in Benue. Three of the five supposed “masters of the electorate” could not carry their own districts while still sitting in Government House.
Ortom openly backed the Labour Party in Benue. The APC won Benue.
So much for directing voters.
And what of Wike himself?
Wike admitted that the campaign around Christianity and the Muslim-Muslim ticket drove support towards Obi, adding: “Even my own children supported Peter Obi.”
A father who could not direct the political choices of his own household now tells Nigerians that he directed the choices of voters across Edo and Cross River.
THE CONFESSION THAT CONFESSES TOO MUCH
Follow Wike’s own logic to its natural conclusion.
He was working for the APC presidential candidate. If he truly controlled Cross River and could determine where its voters would go, why would he hand Peter Obi 179,917 votes against Tinubu’s 130,520?
Why would a political operator working for Tinubu deliberately direct a state towards Obi?
Every student of logic can see that the argument does not add up.
Then there is Rivers.
Wike said Rivers was treated differently because the group did not want Obi to win there, adding: “And we stopped it.”
Tinubu took Rivers with 231,591 votes, while Obi won 175,071 and Atiku got 88,468.
In a democracy, the voter decides.
When a governor says, “we stopped it”, he is not merely describing persuasion. The Obidient Movement itself interpreted his words as an open confession of election manipulation and rigging.
Wike the braggart has now created a problem for Wike the witness.
The man who could not deliver his friend in Cross River now claims to have delivered a nation.
A VIEW FROM OBIO/AKPOR
Dr Adum put his finger on what he sees as the root of Wike’s delusion. Wike’s assessment of Nigeria’s present reality, he said, is limited to Obio/Akpor, not even the whole of Rivers State.
A man who reads a nation of more than 200 million people through the window of his own local government will always mistake his compound for the country.
Dr Adum went further. He condemned what he described as land grabbing under Wike’s watch in the Federal Capital Territory, and the conversion of Abuja’s green areas into private development and investment for friends and cronies.
Land meant as breathing space for the capital’s residents, he argued, has been treated as spoils. It is the same appetite in another form: the belief that whatever Wike can see, he owns.
That is why, in Dr Adum’s words, Wike does not have the capacity to dictate to suffering Nigerians where they will vote. The masses will vote according to their conscience, and that conscience is shaped by the pain they experience every day under the Tinubu administration.
Anyone who believes that a minister can stand between a hungry citizen and his ballot is wallowing in self-delusion, while deceiving Tinubu in the process.
WHAT 2023 WAS, AND WHAT 2027 IS NOT
The only significant role Wike played in 2023 was to disrupt the PDP. He filled the public space with division and confrontation until voters who were desperate to remove the APC found another door.
Those were independent decisions by free citizens.
Nobody took instructions from Port Harcourt.
Obi won Lagos, where no G5 governor ruled.
That disruption does not exist in the ADC today.
The ticket now carries a running mate from Rivers who knows the political terrain and every ward that Wike claims to own. The North is increasingly determined, particularly the North East and North West. Across the South, grievances against Tinubu are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Yet Mr Arrogance is already distributing presidencies like chieftaincy titles.
He told Obi: “For this election, leave it for Tinubu. Prepare for 2031.”
Nigerians are not plucked fowls, and their votes are not Wike’s to allocate.
TO THE PRESS
Adetutu Balogun captured the scene in a single sentence. A sitting minister, she wrote, confesses on television to rigging elections, and the journalist nods along. She added that 24 hours later, the man who openly explained how Rivers was handled was still a minister.
The nodding is no accident.
Too many of the journalists who sit across from Wike behave less like interviewers and more like fans. They enjoy his crooked style. They laugh at his insults, applaud his destructive swagger and validate his boasts because Wike pays them in the currency newsrooms love most: attention.
His outbursts fill studios, trend by evening and sell by morning.
So they let him talk.
And they never ask him to prove anything.
That is the plucked fowl following the grain.
A journalist’s duty is to question, not to transcribe. When a man says, “we stopped it”, the next question writes itself:
Stopped what?
And how?
Nobody asked.
Ms Balogun called Nigerians docile. The suffering masses have been patient, but patience is not surrender.
The next time Wike claims to have made or unmade anyone, ask him about the Cross River governorship, Abia South, Enugu North and Benue North West.
Ask for the ward.
Ask for the proof.
Stop limping after the grain.
TO THE REST OF US
The battle for 2027 will be won long before election day, through organisation, grassroots engagement and a message Nigerians can connect with.
That is where The Narrative Force, and all those who believe in Atiku, have their assignment.
We must remain focused on the issues, expose contradictions when they arise, challenge propaganda with facts and take the message directly to the people.
On 16 January 2027, Nigerians will decide.
Nobody will “stop it”.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
23 September 2026
