Where did FCT Minister Nyesom Wike get his idea of a political Rainbow Coalition, which he has unleashed on the political scene like a cat among the pigeons? No wonder that political feathers are ruffled and are flying in all directions, with APC governors, some ministers and top party officials throwing jibes at one another even when they have an uphill election battle ahead of them in a few months’ time.
Wike probably got his idea from America. In 1984, the extremely colourful Black American civil rights campaigner-turned politician Reverend Jesse Jackson, who passed away in February, formed what he called The Rainbow Coalition. It was a “multicultural initiative aimed at uniting marginalised racial and ethnic groups within the United States political landscape… in response to historical inequalities in political participation, particularly among African Americans who faced significant barriers.” Jackson brought together in his coalition various racial minorities, White liberals, left-of-center Democrats, trade unionists, feminists and LGBTQIA+ advocates to support his dynamic, but unsuccessful, run for US President in 1984. Or maybe Wike borrowed the idea from Kenya where, in 2002, National Alliance Party of Kenya and Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) together formed National Alliance of Rainbow Coalition (NARC), whose candidate, Mwai Kibaki won that year’s presidential elections with 62% of the vote.
Wike’s Rainbow Coalition is a poor carbon copy of Jesse Jackson’s. It has no clear racial, ideological, class or program underpinnings. Unlike Jackson, Wike is not running for president or any other elective post. In almost all respects, Wike is not Jackson. He is not a Reverend Father, but a rough and ready career politician. He does not have Jackson’s great personal history of being a very close aide of Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr. and of marching beside him during the epic American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. If Wike did any marches, it was in the creeks of Rivers State to secure votes for himself or for candidates he supported, such as Rotimi Amaechi and Simi Fubara, all of whom he spectacularly failed out with.
Jesse Jackson was world famous for his quick thought and dazzling oratory. In 1984 when his opponents said that both Cuban President Fidel Castro and Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad used him to release US prisoners in their countries, Jackson said, “I don’t mind being used to free prisoners! I don’t mind being used to reunite families! I don’t mind being used in the service of peace!” On the other hand, the most quotable Wike quotes were when he told a Rivers traditional ruler to “Shut up! You, this small boy! You are nodding your head, with your head gear like Dan Fodio.” And when he told Navy Lieutenant Yerima to get out of the way so he could confiscate an Admiral’s piece of land.
Unlike Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, Wike Rainbow Coalition’s only publicly stated goal is to help President Bola Tinubu to get reelected in next year’s election. But with a very complicated caveat; while it fully supports the APC presidential candidate’s bid, it reserves for itself the right to field governorship, senatorial or other legislative candidates on the platforms of other political parties.
While the Presidency has yet to distance itself from this complicated arrangement, governors of the ruling APC are up in arms against it. Ogun, Kwara, Gombe and Imo APCs have already cried out over Wike’s activities in their states. After a meeting of the APC Governors’ Forum, their Chairman, Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma, read a communique saying “The APC Governors Forum unanimously resolved that its members will not participate in, support or endorse any alliance or political arrangement capable of undermining the re-election of Mr. President, weakening the APC or adversely affecting any candidate of the party at all levels. In other words, the forum has no intention to support any candidate at any level that is not an APC candidate because our candidates who are contesting the election are being sponsored by our party.” It said its position “aligns with the expectations of Mr. President.”
At the weekend, both Zamfara State governor Dauda Lawal and Works Minister Dave Umahi also decried the Rainbow arrangement. While Lawal said Wike should either join APC or quit the federal cabinet, Umahi said there is nothing like Rainbow Coalition in his native Ebonyi State. On top of that, APC’s national working committee, after meeting in Maiduguri, also declared that it will work for APC candidates at all levels, a rejection of Rainbow Coalition.
While it is not yet clear if indeed the APC governors’ position “aligns with the expectations of Mr. President,” who appears to be very fond of Minister Wike, it is very clear that their position is diametrically opposed to Rainbow Coalition’s; it is either you support the total slate of APC candidates or you don’t, but cannot pick and choose who to support across a broad range of political parties. An individual voter can do that; in fact, sophisticated voters do that all the time, but a party man or woman is expected to support the party’s slate all through, otherwise, he is guilty of what in Nigerian politics is called anti-party activity.
Wike’s Rainbow Coalition is a first in Nigerian politics. We have had political alliances since the First Republic, but not with one leg in this party and another leg in another party. In the First Republic, NPC and NNDP formed the Nigeria National Alliance [NNA], while Action Group and NCNC aligned to form United Progressives Grand Alliance, UPGA. Both were whole-party alliances approved by their parties from top to bottom.
In the Second Republic too, we had semi-formal party alliances, such as NPN-NPP Accord and the Meeting of Progressive Governors [[UPN, GNPP and PRP], but each party retained its slate of candidates. What we instead had were defections; if one had fundamental disagreements with his party leaders, he defected to another party. Even governors did so, such as Mohamed Abubakar Rimi of Kano and Abubakar Barde of Gongola, who defected to NPP, and Mohamed Goni of Borno and Clement Isong of Cross River, who defected to UPN. As for ministers, several NPP members served as ministers in Alhaji Shehu Shagari’s NPN government under the terms of the NPN-NPP Accord, but when the accord fell apart in 1982, some of them resigned and remained with their party, while others, such as Foreign Affairs Minister Prof. Ishaya Audu of Kaduna, defected to NPN and retained his ministerial seat.
In the Fourth Republic too, PDP Presidents accommodated ministers from other parties either to reward them for underground support or to broaden their political base. Such as, when President Obasanjo appointed key Alliance for Democracy [AD] leader Chief Bola Ige into his cabinet, first as Power Minister and later as Attorney General and Minister of Justice. President Umaru Yar’adua also took in a few ANPP members as ministers, so President Bola Tinubu’s appointing Wike into his cabinet wasn’t a first. Only that, he gave him a powerful portfolio, a lot of latitude, high visibility and apparently a lot of resources. Wike started by splitting the main opposition PDP down the middle, through a combination of endless litigation and sponsoring dissident factions. There are three likely reasons for this historic deed; one is to punish the party for denying him its 2023 presidential ticket; for subverting its North-South rotation agreement [which, to be frank, President Goodluck Jonathan first subverted in 2011 and 2015] and also by refusing to make Wike its presidential candidate’s running mate. He thus created the G5 alliance of PDP governors that did anti-party and supported Tinubu.
Wike’s Rainbow Alliance was initially confined to Rivers State. Having anointed, then fell out with Governor Simi Fubara, he retained control of Rivers PDP structures, including a majority of State Assembly members, then used his federal position to seize the Rivers State APC structure, then merged the two and added some smaller parties, under whose platforms some candidates contested Local council elections, and made himself leader of the Rainbow Coalition of almost all the parties in the state. When Governor Fubara tried the same game and defected to APC, Wike still sidelined him and denied him the reelection ticket. He instead got House of Representatives Minority Leader Kingsley Chinda to defect to APC and gave him the ticket.
Thus far, things had worked very well for Nyesom Wike. But he stretched his luck to breaking point by extending the Rainbow Coalition experiment to the national scale, kept up his support for Tinubu but sponsored governorship and other candidates in various states on non-APC platforms. That brought the current, high-level conflict with APC governors.
President Tinubu must now be making algebraic calculations. He wants to keep Wike, but with 31 APC governors in the kitty, with PDP now comatose and with the major opposition parties unable to unite behind a single candidate, the large bank of Rivers State votes that Wike offers is no longer as tempting for Tinubu as it was in 2023. Oga Wike should pause and ponder; what he sees as brightly coloured Rainbow might turn out to be a dark Solar Eclipse.