The Fuehrer of Rivers -By Pius Mordi

After the death of Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor of Germany in 1934, Adolf Hitler merged the office with his own and solidified his role as absolute dictator. The name Fuehrer was adopted within Nazi circles, a German word for “leader,” “guide,” or “conductor”.

Ultimately, internationally, it became synonymous with Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Hitler emerged as the Nazi leader by transforming a small extremist group into a mass movement through brutal intimidation, charismatic oratory, propaganda and virulent antisemitism. At the height of his power, he boasted that the Third Reich which signified a totalitarian dictatorship he envisioned as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire would last a thousand years. Hitler’s Third Reich lasted for 12 years, from January 30, 1933, when Hitler himself was appointed Chancellor, to May 8, 1945, when Germany surrendered unconditionally at the end of World War II.

Nyesom Wike, the wannabe maximum and undisputed guardian of politics in Rivers State, is neither charismatic nor is there any tinge of oratory in his numerous monthly press conferences for which a lot of money is paid to the major television networks to broadcast unfiltered. But even after leaving Rivers State after eight years of being the maximum ruler to become the Federal Capital Territory Minister, he believed he had done enough spade work to remain the sole proprietor of political and leadership power in the state.

I am not sure Wike got to study Adolf Hitler’s political trajectory and how he drove his country and the world into a war that devastated Germany and left the rest of the world in ruins, but he must have heard about how the Fuehrer loved power, acquired power and used the power to reshape Germany. For the purpose of this article, we will call Hitler Wike’s mentor or inspiration. As Fuehrer, Hitler considered himself an unrivaled military tactician. In the course of the war on multiple fronts, he often overruled his generals who were the products of elite military institutions in Germany. He ridiculed them when his adventurist style initially won many battles when the Nazis rolled across Europe.

You have to admire Wike’s sense of connecting with the people. In project execution, he knows what appeals to his people. By building numerous roads and bridges, he left no one in doubt that he could provide them what matter most and are most visible – roads, something his predecessors failed to deliver. It is a page from Hitler’s aggressive rebuilding of post-World War I Germany which had been severely hampered by the Treaty of Versailles.

Through his self-styled “rainbow coalition”, Wike has morphed both the PDP and APC into a single unit in the state with himself as the sole determinant of who goes on what platform or gets what. He alone will determine the candidates for 2027, rejecting automatic re-election tickets for incumbent officials, especially Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his loyalists.

Following the Supreme Court’s final judgment on the PDP leadership tussle, Wike knew there were banana peels on the path if he towed the line of the once mighty party. He directed his loyalists within the Rivers State PDP to defect to the APC, again. While claiming that he is not a member of APC, the Screening Committee cleared 32 serving lawmakers loyal to him to contest the APC primaries for the 2027 assembly elections.

The same APC screening committee reportedly disqualified 32 aspirants supported by Governor Fubara. Wike has been bold and daring in his game plan, publicly stating that his camp is not working with Governor Fubara who he accused of breaking a peace agreement brokered by President Tinubu.

Wike has declared himself the leader of both the PDP and APC structures in Rivers State, asserting that his influence is based on control, strategy, and grassroots support. He has indicated that he intends to nominate candidates who are loyal to his faction with a pledge to protecting his political interests as the main determining factor.

The plank of his coalition is support for the re-election of his boss, President Tinubu. It is a line that everyone, irrespective of party, must tow. Members of his coalition, in his words, would assess “political realities” across the state before making electoral decisions. “That is the essence of the rainbow coalition in Rivers State. We will look at where we have strength, compare notes and vote accordingly.” Wike’s seeming sure footedness can hardly be ascribed to a conviction that whatever he decides the Rivers electorate will duly tag along. His conviction seems to rely entirely on the system and its capacity to make the call that will determine the leadership in 2027.

Like the Third Reich Hitler boasted will last a thousand years, Wike thinks his coalition will determine the course of leadership and politics in Rivers State, perhaps indefinitely. From the thousand years, it lasted only 12 years. Can the “coalition” even survive 2027? From history as illustrated by the Reich’s calamitous collapse, political arrangements built on brutal intimidation always spectacularly end in the heap of history… bigly.