Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Nyesom Wike stood before the youths of the Rivers Rainbow Coalition in Port Harcourt on Tuesday and pronounced judgement on Atiku Abubakar. He said he had been in the same party with Atiku. He said Atiku does not keep his word. Then he reached for the line he must have rehearsed:
“What he says in the night is not what he says in the morning.”
It is a good line. It deserves an owner. The record shows who owns it.
The FCT Minister has made a reckless mistake. He has put the question of trust on the table, and on that question no living Nigerian politician has a worse file than his. He opened that file himself, in his own words, on camera, at rallies, in tweets and on national television. We will read it back to him one count at a time. Then we will turn to the man he now serves, because Bola Tinubu’s own file reads the same way.
THE WIKE FILE
COUNT ONE: THE ATIKU HE PRAISED.
In October 2018, when Atiku won the PDP ticket in Port Harcourt, Wike went on Twitter and called him “my brother and friend”. He pledged that Rivers State and its whole people would throw their weight behind him. A few days later, at a thanksgiving service, he declared he would support Atiku to victory. He said Atiku was the best candidate to drive Nigeria to growth and prosperity.
In early 2019, at a rally in Omuma, Etche, he told his people to come out and vote Atiku. He gave his reason in plain words:
“Atiku is a decent and law-abiding politician, who will develop the country rapidly.”
So which Wike should Nigerians believe? The one who called Atiku decent and law-abiding, or the one who now calls him untrustworthy? Atiku has not changed. He is the same man with the same record. What changed was Wike’s position, and Wike’s position changes whenever his interest changes.
His grievance over 2022 does not alter that. A committee recommends, but the Constitution gives the candidate alone the choice of a running mate, and no party chairman’s seat was ever Atiku’s to vacate.
COUNT TWO: THE APC HE BURIED.
In that same October 2018 speech, Wike warned that if the APC government returned in 2019, Nigerians would be digging their own graves. He promised the APC would finally be buried in February 2019.
In March 2021, BBC Pidgin asked him whether he would ever leave the PDP for the APC. His answer was mockery:
“Leave for where? Is the APC a party?”
In 2022, when an edited clip suggested he was defecting, his media office said he would never leave the PDP for what it called the “cancerous APC”. Before the 2023 election, he ridiculed APC aspirants, Tinubu among them, who claimed they wanted to continue Buhari’s “good job”. He asked what good job they were talking about.
Today that same man is Tinubu’s FCT Minister, Tinubu’s self-declared asset and Tinubu’s campaign marshal in Rivers. The grave he dug for the APC has become his office. The cancer has become his medicine. Who, then, says one thing at night and another in the morning?
COUNT THREE: THE PRIMARY HE ACCEPTED, AND THE ONE HE REFUSED.
In 2018, Wike backed Aminu Tambuwal for the PDP ticket, and Atiku won. Wike then tweeted a principle that deserves to be framed. Openly supporting a candidate in the primary, he wrote, “doesn’t translate to not accepting the outcome”. He promised to stop at nothing to support Atiku.
In 2022, Wike was himself the candidate, and he lost to Atiku. Suddenly the principle disappeared. He led the G5, worked against his own party’s candidate, and spent the campaign making sure the man he once called decent did not win. A rule that binds others but never binds Wike is not a principle. It is a convenience.
COUNT FOUR: TWO PARTIES, ONE MAN.
Wike told a media chat in Abuja: “I am still in the PDP.” He dared anyone to say he was not a member. He also serves in an APC federal cabinet and campaigns for the APC presidential candidate. Tinubu himself, speaking publicly, said Wike was not a member of his party, “not yet”.
His Rainbow Coalition, he insists, has nothing to do with the APC. Yet it exists to re-elect the APC’s candidate. Meanwhile, Arise News reports that in Imo he is backing the PDP governorship candidate against the camp of APC Governor Hope Uzodimma. Similar alignments are reported in Kwara, Gombe and Cross River. The Imo APC chairman responded that no law lets a man belong to two parties at once, and told Wike to join the President’s party properly if he wants to work for him.
So Wike works for Tinubu while undermining Tinubu’s own governors. He stays in the PDP while working to defeat the PDP’s purpose. Even the APC’s own men do not trust him. And this is the man lecturing Nigerians on trust.
COUNT FIVE: THE BETRAYAL HE CALLS OTHERS.
Wike has called Tambuwal a “consistent betrayer”. He has called Peter Obi a “fake man”. Yet in 2023 he boasted that in 2019 he was one of those who helped choose Obi as Atiku’s running mate. The same Obi he helped choose is now fake. The same Atiku he campaigned for is now untrustworthy. The same Tambuwal he backed for the presidential ticket is now a betrayer. Every man who has stood close to Wike eventually finds himself named as a traitor.
COUNT SIX: THE CAMPAIGNS HE LED, THEN TURNED ON.
Nigerians do not need a viral clip to see this pattern. The public record is enough. Wike was Director General of Rotimi Amaechi’s campaign and praised him lavishly, then turned on him. He was Director General of Godwin Obaseki’s re-election campaign in Edo and spoke well of him, then later attacked his character. Whoever Wike leads to victory, he later attacks.
Amaechi yesterday. Obaseki yesterday. Atiku yesterday. Tinubu today. Whoever is next, the outcome is the same.
COUNT SEVEN: THE GAMBLER WHO CALLS OTHERS GAMBLERS.
At Ayama, Wike called Atiku a political gambler, “kalokalo”, because he has contested the presidency several times. Two problems sink the charge.
First, Wike himself bought a ticket in that same lottery in 2022, entered the PDP presidential primary, and lost. A man who gambled and lost cannot call the winner of that contest a gambler.
Second, the party Wike now serves rose to power on the persistence he is mocking. Muhammadu Buhari ran in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and won on his fourth attempt in 2015. The APC built a government on that fourth attempt and called it resilience. When Atiku perseveres, Wike calls it gambling. When the APC’s man persevered, they called it destiny. Contesting repeatedly is not the problem. The problem is that Wike’s measuring rod changes every time he picks it up.
He did not need to search for a man whose night contradicts his morning. He only needed a mirror.
THE TINUBU FILE
Wike told the youths of Rivers to trust their destiny to someone who has already “done it”. Let us look at what his principal has done with his own words.
COUNT ONE: THE SUBSIDY HE CONDEMNED, THEN DECREED.
In January 2012, as an opposition leader, Bola Tinubu wrote against the Jonathan government’s attempt to remove the fuel subsidy in one go. He branded it a tax on the people and protested how abrupt it was. Within two weeks of the public outcry, that government listened and brought the price back down.
On 29 May 2023, Tinubu stood at his own inauguration and said, “subsidy is gone”, with no phasing, no cushion and no consultation. He did, in one sentence, what he had condemned in an entire article. And where his predecessor listened to the people, he refused to step back. That is not a change of mind. It is a reversal that went against the people.
COUNT TWO: THE LIGHT THAT NEVER CAME.
During the 2023 campaign, Tinubu made a vow that Nigerians remember:
“if I don’t give you constant electricity within 4 years, don’t vote for me”
Now the four years are almost over, and the darkness remains. His Special Adviser on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, has re-described the vow as a statement of intent backed by a commitment. A vow made at a rally has been downgraded to an intention in a press briefing. When the President’s own spokesman has to rewrite the President’s promise, the question of trust has already been answered.
COUNT THREE: THE BILLS THAT STILL GUESS.
The Renewed Hope document promised to end estimated billing and make every electricity bill meter based. At the end of the administration’s third year, an analysis in June 2026 found that as many Nigerians as in 2023 were still receiving estimated bills. The promise was written down, printed, and then forgotten.
COUNT FOUR: THE CORRUPTION HE “ELIMINATED”.
In Brazil in August 2025, Tinubu told the world his government had eliminated corruption. Months later, Transparency International’s 2025 index scored Nigeria 26 out of 100 and ranked it 142nd of 182 countries. You cannot abolish a problem in a foreign capital that the world still measures at home.
COUNT FIVE: THE NATION THAT IS “NOT BLEEDING”.
When the Catholic Bishops came to Aso Rock in July and described a bleeding nation, the President, by Cardinal Onaiyekan’s account, told them the nation was not bleeding. This is the same man whose government justified its harsh reforms by describing the economy it inherited as being on the brink of collapse. Collapse, when it justifies the pain. Fine, when the bishops count the wounded. Each story fits the occasion it was told for.
COUNT SIX: THE MINISTER HE OWED NOTHING.
In 2023, when Governor Wike asked the Federal Government to refund money Rivers had spent on federal roads, Tinubu responded publicly that he owed Wike nothing, since Rivers people were using those roads. Months later, the man he owed nothing became his minister. The two men were reconciled by power, not by principle. A bond formed that way will break the same way.
THE PARTY OF THE NIGHT
Put the two files side by side and the APC’s 2027 message becomes clear. A President whose campaign promises have been downgraded to statements of intent. A minister whose praise of Atiku is still on the record. A coalition that says it is not APC, built to re-elect the APC candidate, while working against APC governors. This is a party whose night does not agree with its morning, and whose leaders do not agree even with their own past selves.
Against that stands a man whose word has been tested where it costs most. Atiku stood down in Jos in 1993. He stood aside in 1999. In 2003, when governors and lawmakers pressed him to run in his own right, he declined and campaigned as the deputy on his principal’s re-election ticket. Each time, he stepped aside for the stronger position and before the contest was decided. In more than thirty years, he has never asked a stronger man to step aside for him. Those are not the habits of a man who changes his word overnight.
And unlike the President’s vows, Atiku’s commitments are written down and published in advance. They are placed before the people to examine and own, before a single vote is cast. One side asks Nigerians to trust words its own spokesmen are already revising. The other places its plans in their hands.
Wike asked the youths of Rivers whether they would vote for Atiku, and his own coalition shouted no. But crowds at a minister’s rally are not the electorate. The electorate is the woman in Yenagoa paying for fuel she cannot afford. It is the trader in Kano whose capital has been eaten by inflation. It is the graduate in Makurdi sitting in the dark that was promised to end within four years.
They will hold the President’s vow up to the light he did not provide. On 16 January 2027, 88 days from today, the morning will come. Nigerians will remember everything that was said in the night.
#AtikuAbubakar #Atiku2027 #ADC #NyesomWike #WikeFile #TinubuFile #RenewedHopeScam #NightAndMorning #2027Elections #TheNarrativeForce
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General,
The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
21 October 2026
