Nyesom Wike has never met a microphone he could not wrestle to the floor.
Where other politicians make statements, Wike conducts a demolition exercise.
He does not speak; he arrives—with caterpillars, bulldozers, sirens and a convoy of self-congratulation.
So, when he declared that Bola Tinubu would have captured Osun “at all costs” if he, Wike, had been sent to the front, Nigerians heard the familiar drumbeat of the political strongman: bring me the battlefield and I will bring you the bodies, the ballots and the victory speech.
In Wike’s political dictionary, an election is not a conversation between citizens and power.
It is a construction contract.
Find the structure.
Purchase the scaffolding.
Lock the gates.
Reward the foremen.
Frighten the labourers.
Then announce that the building chose its architect.
Poor Ademola Adeleke, in this muscular folktale, becomes a lucky dancer who escaped because the Rivers general was not deployed to Osogbo.
The voters of Osun are reduced to market women and roadside spectators, watching two political transport unions quarrel over who owns the park.
But history has a wicked sense of humour.
It allows the loud man to mistake applause for immortality.
Arnoldo Alemán of Nicaragua built a patronage kingdom and ended up meeting the cold grammar of corruption charges.
Alberto Fujimori transformed Peru’s state into a one-man security agency, then fled into the thin shelter of exile.
Slobodan Milošević rode ethnic fury until the streets that once shouted his name helped escort him into disgrace.
Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt dressed brute force in holy language, only for history to pull off the garment and reveal the bloodstains.
Every political brawler believes his network is a fortress.
Usually, it is a rented canopy at an owambe: impressive until the man paying the band stops sending money.
The loyalists who shout “Chairman!” today will tomorrow develop sore throats.
The men who swear that the boss can move mountains will suddenly remember that mountains have no voter cards.
Tinubu has survived too many political funerals to mistake “victory at all costs” for wisdom.
If it served him in 2023, 2027 will be different.
“Victory at all costs” was Wike’s leverage into the Tinubu camp in 2023.
He is once again drumming the same mental deceit into Tinubu’s brain.
For a President, who believes ‘all is fair in politics”, Wike knows, that Tinubu is trapped.
But if Tinubu has sense, Osun should have told him, that a win, contracted “at all costs”, purchased with intimidation, institutional capture and endless political warfare is not a mandate.
It is a debt note, signed in public blood.
Wike’s “victory at all costs” mantra means that blood will flow in 2027.
It means, it doesn’t matter how many Nigerians die, as long as Wike and Tinubu win.
It means , it doesn’t matter if our democracy or nation is extinguished, as long as King Tinubu wins.
But Wike doesn’t know that “victory at all costs” has dual parentage.
Nigeria would not die.
But if Nigerians need to die, to rid it, of scums like Wike, so be it.
Wike should beware the mirror.
It has praised many strongmen before handing them their last lonely reflection.
By Udo Silas
