Millions of perpetually oppressed Nigerians particularly derived secondhand joy from seeing Wike, in a moment of unaccustomed powerlessness…
By Farooq A. Kperogi
In Nigeria, elite oppression and callousness are often mostly abstract. Most people at the lower end of the social scale think and feel that many people in positions of power, comfortably ensconced in their sinecures, are haughty, self-impressed, and possessed of ice-cold disdain for them. But it is FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, more than anyone in the current government, who brings this abstract ideation into a raw, visceral, in-your-face embodiment through his habitual conduct.
He has become a proverb for boorishness, unendurable arrogance, condescension, tactlessness, and verbal primitivism. He is a callous, tone-deaf, loud-mouthed, foul-spoken oppressor who excites visceral emotions in most Nigerians irrespective of their regional, religious, ethnic, or political affiliations. Wike doesn’t do his own oppression of the people in peace or style. He does it with vile and vicious villainy.
That was precisely why his humiliation by Navy Lt. A.M. Yerima provided unrestrained, much-needed, exhilarating national catharsis for vast swaths of Nigerians. In Yerima, many Nigerians saw a brave, principled young man who pushed back on Wike’s intolerably familiar and habitual superciliousness and unrelieved toxicity.
Nigerians experienced a collective sensation of emotionally purging excitement through the vicariousness of watching video clips of his encounter with Yerima, which has spawned such creative social media jokes as, “Wike was chasing me in my dream, but when I yelled ‘Yerima!’ he disappeared!”
Millions of perpetually oppressed Nigerians particularly derived secondhand joy from seeing Wike, in a moment of unaccustomed powerlessness, flip out his phone to call the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and then hand it over to Yerima in an impotent bid to be allowed access to the disputed property Yerima was guarding.
As soon as Yerima was handed the phone, he instinctively took his hand out of his pocket as a sign of respect for his boss, calmly explained why he wouldn’t allow Wike and his ill-bred goons into the property, then handed the phone back to Wike without yielding to Wike’s demands.
In a fit of bacchanalian rage, Wike called the young man “a big fool.” His earnest, insistent, impassioned, lightning-fast riposte of “I am not a fool, sir,” obliquely told Wike that he was the big fool. Only a fool would, as a minister, publicly call a military officer in uniform young enough to be his son a fool in the full glare of cameras.
Wise people impose restraint on themselves, tutor their instincts, and school their emotions. That someone could publicly tell Wike to his face, even if implicitly, that he is the fool that Nigerians say in hushed whispers was infinitely satisfying for millions of the direct and indirect victims of Wike’s agonizing imperiousness.
It was even more consoling to many Nigerians that although Wike yelled at Yerima to “get out!” it was actually Wike who got out in disgrace — diminished, subdued, chastened, and with his tail between his legs. That was a once-in-a-blue-moon, David-versus-Goliath defeat of a detestable pocket tyrant.
Now, had this been a different minister, the conversation would have taken a radically different tenor. Many legal commentators have persuasively pointed out that Wike has the right to allocate, reallocate, seize, and restore land within the Federal Capital Territory.