Blaming others for personal transgressions is as old as humanity. Caught out by the all-knowing, all-seeing God for surreptitiously dining on what was forbidden, Adam looked no further than Eve his sole human partner in the blissful garden as the cause of man’s first disobedience. Not to be outdone, Eve herself quickly fingered the Serpent as the culprit who led her on. Ever since, poor Satan has been taking the rap becoming the fall guy for some of humanity’s self-inflicted problems. About a week ago, the irrepressible former governor of Rivers state Nyesom Wike nearly tearfully told a congregation in a church in Port Harcourt how he was almost done in by poisoning at PDP Secretariat Wadata House Abuja in 2018. Tantalised thus and waiting to hear some more sob stories from someone who has held one political office or the other since 1999, the congregants didn’t get to know who tried to do Wike in or whatever for. Filled with the spirit in the temple of God that day, Wike assured his audience it was a miracle he survived the attack. But some of his close associates in PDP have come out to say the man was filled with a different kind of spirit resulting in his temporary prostration. In other words, nobody tried to kill Wike but himself as THEWILL surmised. Michael Jimoh reports…
Thanksgiving and testimonies in churches sometimes draw the most attention for obvious reasons. After all the earth-shaking dance, praise and worship sessions lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more, preachers sometimes send exhausted worshippers to sleep with their soporific sermons. Which is why stern-faced ushers walk the aisle and pews prodding awake those already dozing off.
But once its thanksgiving or testimony time, the worshippers sit up at once, ears pricked up for that moving message of deliverance, of divine intervention in the life of a member otherwise held hostage by demonic forces, say, a generational curse or some such man-made catastrophe averted just in the nick of time.
With studio-quiet silence in the church except the voice of the individual (male or female) offering the testimony or thanksgiving, such times allow both the GO and worshippers a rare glimpse into the miraculous ways of bringing back to life an already doomed soul: a long-suffering, despondent barren woman suddenly rewarded with triplets, for instance, or rescuing another from misfortune or the jaws of certain death.
In the case of Nyeson Wike former governor of Rivers state he would have long been a dead man were it not for the hand of God. In a report that made headlines in Nigerian newspapers last week, the voluble erstwhile number one citizen in the coastal state told a gathering at St Peter’s Deanery Rumuepirikom Obio Akpor Port Harcourt how he was poisoned at Wadata House PDP Secretariat in Abuja. Though he neglected to mention the “they” behind the poison attack, Wike was now at the church for a thanksgiving service.
The poison in question, as the newspapers put it, ravaged his internal organs, affecting his liver and kidney and almost killed him but for God’s intervention.
In Wike’s own words, “God was in charge, everybody who knew how we came to power in 2015, knew it was turbulent. But God saw us through. When you are in office, many people think things are going well with you. Nobody wants to find out the problems you are facing as a human.”
Three years into his administration as governor of Rivers state from 2015 and after surmounting the judicial obstacles strewn along his path via election petitions, Wike said his enemies almost got at him in the most unlikely place – PDP headquarters in Abuja where, ordinarily, he should be as safe as Pedro in his house. It was not to be from the former governor’s retelling of what happened that day in December.
“In December 2018,” Wike told his listeners (including Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos state, Senate president Godswill Akpabio, Deputy Senate president Jibrin Barau, some serving and ex-governors) “it was a day my former Chief of Staff was going to have thanksgiving. I was to attend that thanksgiving. From that Sunday I never came down from my room. It was bad. But those who attended the January 1st state banquet of 2019 will know that I never spoke that day. I just sat down there and told the Deputy Governor to speak on my behalf. I thought it was over.”
In his testimony, it would have been over but for the prompt medical attention he received after the poisoning. Airlifted to Beirut Lebanon, doctors on hand probed his insides and then told him his “liver and kidney were all gone.”
But after about a week under intensive care, the doctors discharged Wike and he returned to Nigeria. As a result, he became naturally suspicious of everyone because of that incident, insisting that he not only altered his itinerary during his campaign for reelection but also decided not to “enter any party leader’s home” from then on.
More misfortune was to come Wike’s path years later, this time involving his wife and at no less a crucial time in his political life. Wike was on the campaign trail during the presidential primaries of the PDP last year when his wife called to say she’d been diagnosed with cancer. Nothing could be more disastrous for a man fighting a battle on the political front. Now, here was bad news from the home front as well. To say Wike was devastated is an understatement. According to him, he called the leaders in his campaign team including the G-5 Governors that there was a problem and he was “planning to quit the race.”
But the same wife, Eberechi, Wike told the congregation, encouraged him to continue with the campaign that “all would be well.”
As if dogged by a series of misfortunes, Wike let on that even after the primaries there was still more trouble. On another occasion, he was on his way to Abuja with his wife when news reached them that a mysterious fire gutted his wife’s room and destroyed everything she had as a woman.
Among the listening guests and worshippers at St Peter’s Deanery on that thanksgiving day, a lot of sympathetic heads would have drooped on shoulders, wondering how so much calamity could befall an individual at such short intervals.
Apparently, the former governor’s spouse is made of sterner stuff, as Wike himself told the audience. “Being a strong woman, my wife never showed it. But today my wife is hale and hearty. The cancer incident was the one I knew that God had done all for me.”
The Almighty’s hand would also be revealed in what was definitely going to be a plane crash at some other time. In Wike’s telling, he was on a trip to Abuja with three party leaders after the PDP presidential primaries when the aircraft was rocked by an explosion.
“15 minutes of take-off at the Air Force base,” Wike said, “we heard an explosion. They locked the cockpit. One engine is gone and the pilot said it was safer to turn back to Port Harcourt. Before we landed there were many ambulances and fire service trucks lined up. We landed safely by the Grace of God. I didn’t tell anybody.”
His reason for keeping some of those near tragic situations to his chest was “to avoid frightening his supporters who could begin to behave anyhow.”
PDP Responds to Poison Allegation
Reacting to Wike’s allegations of poisoning, PDP’s presidential candidate in the February polls Atiku Abubakar deflated the former governor’s claim. Phrank Shaibu, SA on Public Communications to the former vice president said Wike “was a victim of self-inflicted alcoholic poisoning.”
Continuing, Shaibu said that “Governor Wike has always been open about his intense and indubitable love for whiskey. He even said back in March that he was sipping a 40-year-old whiskey with his friends while watching Atiku and others protesting on TV at 11am.
“Governor Wike has also been seen drinking and dancing in video, including one he did with former Governor Rochas Okorocha. If Wike was indeed poisoned and his organs failed, he ought to be a teetotaler by now and reduce his drinking. I am not a medical doctor but it is general knowledge that excessive alcohol consumption leads to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, digestive problems and cancer of the breast, mouth, throat, oesophagus, voice box, liver, colon and rectum.”
Abubakar’s response came barely a week after Wike charged that he was poisoned at Wadata House. Instead of the thanksgiving, Shaibu went on, Wike ought to have gone for confession for “his ignoble role in the election in Rivers state…Other ailments associated with excessive drinking include: weakening of the immune system, increasing the chances of getting sick; learning and memory problems, including dementia and poor sexual performance. Wike should look inwards. Let us assume that he was poisoned by food. Was his hoarse and husky voice also caused by food poisoning? Governor Wike ought to be doing confessions rather than thanksgiving.”
Taking further potshots at Wike, Shaibu observed that one of the former governor’s G-5 member Seyi Makinde of Oyo state aptly described him as “a naked wire. Everyone knows that all a naked wire does is to kill people by electrocution.”
Though Wike did not exactly murder the new senate president Akpabio, the former’s revelation during the thanksgiving that the ex-governor of Akwa Ibom state gave him N200million for his campaign in the 2014/ 2015 governorship election caused quite some shock, not least to Akpabio himself.
Unprompted, Wike told the congregation how Akpabio stood by him all through the period. As he recounted it, Akpabio was abused because he came out to “support me. He was abused that how can he put his hand in the politics of Rivers. He told them (accusers) he has seen that the only person who could win that election (Rivers guber) was me. He did not just come out. He gave me N200Million for that election. That is why I said one good turn deserves another. And I also supported him. Thank God he succeeded (as Senate President).”
Like PDP’s prompt response to Wike’s allegation of poisoning, Akpabio also replied him. “That money came from my savings in the telecoms industry where I was a managing director,” the Senate president declared. “The money was not from the Government of Akwa Ibom state. I should make that clarification. I paid tax on that money. If you check you will know.”
Akpabio’s riposte, analysts now say, was not merely to assure the people of Akwa Ibom that the N200m was not from their treasury but to also distance himself from a man known for his unguarded utterances, a man who blabs on a whim if only for the publicity mileage he will benefit from it.
To be sure, some of the 18 governors who left office last May are fast fading into political oblivion, some not mentioned at all except for a few who have kept a date with EFCC. But with the thanksgiving in Port Harcourt, Wike has been in the news all week. Combative as ever, he is certain to not gloss over Atiku’s charge that alcohol almost ruined his internal organs and not the poison he mentioned St Peter’s Deanery in Port Harcourt. Nigerians eagerly await Wike’s counteroffensive.
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
