Wike, Fubara and the Politics of Reconciliation in Tinubu’s Re-election Calculus

Nyesom Wike stood before journalists recently and said that Governor Siminalayi Fubara had corrected his mistakes by returning to the political family that brought him to power. He added that both men would now support President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election as a united front.

For anyone who followed the Rivers State crisis closely, the statement landed with the weight of everything it did not say.

Wike is the FCT Minister and the political godfather who engineered Fubara’s rise to the governorship of Rivers State. The two men then spent the better part of two years in open warfare, a conflict that triggered a state of emergency, cabinet dissolutions, and sustained instability in one of Nigeria’s most economically critical states. The feud, once believed to be a misunderstanding, turned out to be a full-scale power struggle over who controlled Rivers after Wike left Government House.

According to some observers, the clearest evidence that the reconciliation that followed was not a meeting of equals was that Fubara returned to the table on terms that Wike largely dictated.

He agreed to serve out his current term without seeking a second one in 2027. He ceded the power to nominate all 23 local government chairpersons to Wike. He publicly endorsed Wike’s preferred candidate, Kingsley Chinda, for the 2027 governorship. He also settled outstanding allowances owed to the 27 pro-Wike lawmakers, who then withdrew their impeachment proceedings against him.

For context, Rivers is one of Nigeria’s most voter-rich and economically significant states, home to the oil infrastructure that underpins the national economy. Leaving it in political chaos heading into 2027 is not an option any federal government can afford. A united Rivers APC, with Wike’s grassroots machinery and Fubara’s state resources pointing in the same direction, is worth far more to a re-election campaign than either man fighting alone.

Although Wike called it a correction of mistakes, experts want the rest of us to consider whether the arithmetic might be telling a cleaner story.