2025 will be remembered as the year the unthinkable happened: the total political decimation of Nyesom Ezebunwo Wike, a man who once strutted across Nigeria’s political landscape with unrestrained confidence and an aura of invincibility. For over a decade, Wike built a reputation as the man who could command Rivers State, intimidate adversaries, and bend the political weather in his favour. But every political empire carries the seeds of its collapse, and in 2025, Wike met the architects of his undoing all at once: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Bala Mohammed, Seyi Makinde, and ultimately, Siminalayi Fubara — the protégé who became the executioner.
A Fall Long Prepared, Long Ignored
Wike’s undoing did not begin in 2025. It was a slow-moving disaster anchored in pride, impulse, and miscalculation.
After losing the PDP presidential primary in 2022, Wike transformed from a party strongman into a political arsonist, burning bridges he once crossed with caution. His war against the PDP hierarchy was explosive, divisive, and deeply personal. By aligning with APC elements, he fractured the party he once dominated.
By the time the PDP expelled him in 2025, Wike was already a man without a party, without a base, and without a lifeline.
Tinubu’s Calculated Patience
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu understood Wike’s strengths and his fatal weaknesses. Appointing him FCT Minister was not a crowning moment — it was containment disguised as reward. Once inside the federal structure, Wike lost the autonomy that fueled his power.
When the Rivers crisis reached boiling point, Wike expected unconditional support. Instead, Tinubu chose constitutional order. He stood with Siminalayi Fubara, not Wike — a decision that exposed Wike’s overestimation of his own relevance.
It was the beginning of the end.
Bala Mohammed & Makinde: Silence That Spoke Louder Than Rejection
Two men Wike once considered allies — Bala Mohammed and Seyi Makinde — quietly abandoned him in 2025.
Bala realigned with PDP elders.
Makinde refused to drown in Wike’s battles.
Their silence sealed Wike’s isolation. The political structure he once terrorised no longer recognized him.
Impunity in the FCT — The Final Nail
If Wike’s political decline had any remaining brakes, he destroyed them himself through his highhanded, unilateral, impunity-laden administration of the Federal Capital Territory.
Under his watch:
Demolitions became spectacles of brutality.
Investor confidence dipped as uncertainty rose.
Civil servants felt targeted.
Diplomats complained quietly.
Political stakeholders across party lines felt disrespected.
Wike turned Abuja into his personal empire, operating as though it were Port Harcourt 2.0. The bulldozers, the bluster, the fear-mongering — all of it widened his list of political enemies.
Wike stepped on toes in every sphere of the polity: governors, legislators, traditional rulers, party structures, business elites, activists, and even fellow ministers.
By mid-2025, he had built a coalition — not of supporters, but of people waiting for his fall.
Sim Fubara — The Betrayal That Ended the Reign
No event in 2025 symbolised Wike’s downfall more clearly than Siminalayi Fubara’s defection to the APC.
For Wike, Fubara was supposed to be loyal, submissive, and eternally grateful. But political history teaches one lesson repeatedly: protégés do not remain servants forever.
Fubara’s defection was public emancipation — and Tinubu’s warm embrace made it irreversible.
In that single moment, Rivers State slipped forever out of Wike’s hands.
The empire collapsed in real time.
A Career Reduced to Rubble
By the final months of 2025, the once-untouchable general was left with:
No party
No stable base in APC
No influence in PDP
No control over Rivers State
No national leverage
No political alliances
Wike’s political career, once defined by power and swagger, stood in ruins.
History’s Cold Verdict
Nyesom Wike rose like a tempest — loud, forceful, undeniable.
But he fell like a shadow — quietly, inevitably, and irrevocably.
His arrogance in the FCT, his war against his own party, his misreading of Tinubu, his underestimation of Fubara, and his habit of stepping on every available toe combined to bring an end so total that no resurrection seems possible.
2025 did not merely weaken Nyesom Wike — it crushed his political career beyond repair.
Adieu, the Nebuchadnezzar of Obiakpo.
