By Ayodele Oni
Journalist and political analyst, Mr. Babajide Kolade-Otitoju, has defended the position of the governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) over their position not to work with the rainbow coalition, a group being backed by the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT), Nyesom Wike.
He traced the decision of governors to distance themselves from the rainbow coalition to a series of direct contests in which Wike, is backing candidates against the preferred successors of sitting governors.
The APC Governors Forum had resolved that its members would not support any arrangement capable of undermining the party, weakening its structures, or affecting its candidates, and said they remain committed to the party and its political structure for the 2027 elections.
Asked why the governors are uncomfortable with a minister who has consistently declared his support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Kolade-Otitoju, speaking on a journalists’ discussion programme, said the answer lies not in the presidential race at all, but in the governorship contests that follow it.
“There are a number of reasons for that,” he said, before setting out three states in which he says the minister has fielded a direct challenge.
On Kwara, he said the minister is backing a candidate brought forward to challenge the person the state governor has produced as the party’s candidate.
“So this is direct confrontation that is to take place,” he said.
On Gombe, he said the sitting governor has put forward a man whose surname is Gwamna, observing wryly that the word means governor in Hausa.
“So he has brought a man who wants to be governor and his name is governor.
“Now Wike has brought a different person, the former Minister of Communications. Pantami is his candidate in Gombe. That’s another direct confrontation. The governor has a different person.”
On Imo State, he said the minister is supporting a PDP candidate who is not the person the governor is backing.
“He already has someone that he is backing to be governor in that place, and that person is different from the person that Hope is backing.”
The analyst pointed out that the minister’s method has been to gather politicians who lost out in the ruling party’s primaries.
“What Wike has done is, aggrieved people who came out of the APC primaries. They are people that he has brought closer to himself and given them the wings to fly.”
He cited a defection in Kwara in support: “So you see that in Kwara, Saliu Mustapha, the senator representing Kwara Central, he has defected to the PDP.”
He noted that the platform in question is the faction of the party recognised in law, and said commentators had for a long time treated a rival faction as authentic notwithstanding that it had lost in court.
The analyst then advanced what he described as the strategic logic of the arrangement, arguing that the minister is denying the leading opposition candidate a pool of disaffected politicians.
“So what Wike is doing is his best to stop Atiku from winning the election, because if these people were not harvested by him, they would have gone to the other side.
Do you get the point I’m making? And he is the President’s supporter.
“But if he left them to go to Atiku, it will strengthen them. They will galvanise support for Atiku and weaken the President’s chances.
So in a way he’s indirectly still working for the President, and he has not denied that.”
On the governors’ motivation, Kolade-Otitoju was blunt, describing their position as enlightened self-interest.
“These governors see him as a threat to their desire to supplant themselves with their preferred candidates.
“And those preferred candidates are the candidates that won the primary election that they pretended not to be involved in.
“Even though they were not physically seen to be doing it, we all know that these were the people that they supported.”
He said the resulting position is a straightforward conflict of interest.
“All of you are supporting the President, but you are also working against their own interest, because they want APC to win in that state.
‘Now you brought candidates against APC in those states. You don’t expect them to be giving you a pat on the back or pumping hands with you when you have brought people who could potentially stop them from being able to produce their successors. So it is a conflict of interest now that is at play.”
While defending the minister’s right to operate as he has, Kolade-Otitoju was sharply critical of his public conduct, saying the quarrel was avoidable and that the minister struck first.
“There is no point fighting Wike. The only problem is that Wike, in his media chats, says things that he ought not to say. That’s my query with him. When he attacked the governor, there was no need for it.
“In that media chat, for example, the governor hardly talks to anybody. He doesn’t grant interviews. He just goes his way. But you went to a media chat to take him on.”
He pressed the point with an illustration: “If a governor has someone that he wants to become the next governor of his state, and you have brought a person to challenge that person and probably even defeat that person, you expect him to be happy with you? When they are saying that you brought a threat?”
He said the same restraint should have applied in Imo: “I know that they’ve been having issues, the uneasy relationship between him and Hope especially.
“But I believe that is their problem. I do not talk about it, but I knew that they had issues. Now, Hope has never come out publicly to say it.
“We all know they have an uneasy relationship, but it is still Wike who came out to openly attack them. So that’s why they too have come out to speak in this manner.”
His prescription was that each side stay in its own lane: “There’s no reason for them to openly show the divisions amongst them.
“Allow Wike to run his thing, and Wike should not interfere in the internal affairs of the APC.
“Remain in your PDP, but don’t interfere in the internal affairs of the APC. And there’s no need for you to be attacking key people in the APC, because when you do that, they will fight back.”
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