A former South-East spokesman to President Bola Tinubu, Denge Onoh, has attributed the growing face-off between the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, and governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress to what he described as the minister’s long history of using political alliances to weaken established political structures.
Onoh, in a statement made available to journalists on Thursday, was reacting to Wike’s recent media chat in which the FCT minister criticised APC governors opposed to his political activities, including his emerging “Rainbow Coalition.”
On Wike’s current confrontation with APC governors, he said the minister’s political activities had created concerns within the ruling party because of his continued influence over structures outside the APC.
The South-East politician said Wike’s political platform had previously fielded candidates for legislative and governorship elections under the PDP, arguing that the minister’s political network remained connected to the opposition party despite his membership of the APC-led Federal Executive Council.
He said, ‘The reason is simple. Wike’s PDP fielded 405 National Assembly candidates to contest across the 109 Senate and 360 House of Representatives seats, and 23 governorship candidates across the states holding gubernatorial elections.
“Wike’s historical pattern of being an aggressive political instrument perfectly explains his current, volatile face-off with several APC Governors and the wider APC structure. His political survival has always depended on maintaining a theatre of war.
“Having been absorbed into an APC-led administration while stubbornly trying to hold onto the remnants of the PDP structure in Rivers State, he now finds himself in a friction zone. Higher political forces within the national framework continue to tolerate and utilise Wike to destabilise opposition strongholds and manage geopolitical balances.”
The former spokesman also stated that APC governors were therefore wary of the minister’s activities because they could affect the party’s internal cohesion ahead of the 2027 elections.
Onoh claimed that Wike’s “Rainbow Coalition” was part of a broader effort by the minister to maintain political relevance and negotiate his position beyond the 2027 elections.
He described Wike as “the wrecking ball of the Jonathan Presidency,” alleging that the former minister was deployed in the political battle between Jonathan and Amaechi after the relationship between the Rivers governor and the presidency deteriorated.
“Wike’s political journey, from his roots as a local government chairman to his contemporary standing, reveals a consistent, troubling pattern.
“Rather than a trajectory of independent statesmanship, it is a legacy defined by bitter political controversies and a recurring role as a political wrecking ball used by higher authorities to decimate political opponents,” he argued.
His concerns come barely 24 hours after Wike described the governors as “politically lazy” for opposing his Rainbow Coalition ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The APC governors, led by the Chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum and Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, had declared that they would not participate in, support or endorse any alliance that could undermine President Bola Tinubu’s re-election bid or affect APC candidates at any level.
But Wike, in an interview on Arise TV’s Prime Time on Tuesday, dismissed the governors’ concerns, arguing that his support for Tinubu did not mean he had abandoned the Peoples Democratic Party or that other parties should be prevented from fielding candidates.