From G5 to rainbow coalition: Wike’s new political calculus, By Ehi Braimah

Nyesom Wike has never been a politician who hides behind ambiguity. When he takes a political position, he usually does so loudly, visibly and with an unmistakable sense of purpose. From the People’s Democratic Party’s G5 governors in 2022–2023 to the Rainbow Coalition now taking shape ahead of the 2027 elections, one thread runs through his politics: the determination to remain relevant, retain political leverage and operate beyond conventional party boundaries.

The latest confrontation between Wike and governors elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) therefore deserves more attention than the headlines it has generated. It is not simply a quarrel over a coalition, but it is a contest over political influence, party structures and, ultimately, who controls the machinery around President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Nigeria approaches 2027.

The APC Governors’ Forum recently rejected political alliances that could create parallel structures or undermine APC candidates. The governors said they would support the party’s candidates, while Wike responded that he never approached them for an alliance in the first place. His Rainbow Coalition, he insists, is designed to mobilise support for Tinubu’s re-election and is separate from the APC.

This is a needless headache for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with less than four months to the presidential election, but that distinction is important because Wike is making a proposition that challenges how party politics is usually played: a politician can belong to one party, support another party’s presidential candidate and still participate in other elections through his own party.

Wike’s position is that he supports Tinubu for president but has never promised that the PDP will withdraw from governorship, National Assembly or State Assembly elections. He argues that Nigerian voters have always been capable of voting differently for different offices on the same ballot, citing the 2023 elections as evidence.

This is the logic behind the Rainbow Coalition, but the APC governors see the matter differently. For them, an election is not divisible so neatly. The same governors expected to deliver votes for Tinubu must also deliver APC senators, members of the House of Representatives, state legislators and, in many cases, successors to themselves. A coalition that mobilises voters for Tinubu while supporting opposition candidates at other levels could therefore weaken the APC’s own political machinery.

The governors’ concern, in other words, is not necessarily that Wike supports Tinubu; it is that Wike wants to mobilise support for Tinubu outside the formal APC structure while retaining the freedom to support candidates who may be running against APC candidates. That is where the political collision begins.

The G5 Was the Prototype

To understand today’s Rainbow Coalition, it is useful to return to 2022. Wike was one of five PDP governors who formed the G5, or Integrity Group, following the PDP presidential primary won by former vice president Atiku Abubakar. The governors demanded, among other things, the resignation of PDP national chairman Iyorchia Ayu, arguing that the party’s presidential candidate and national chairman should not come from the same region. They subsequently refused to support Atiku’s presidential campaign.

The G5 was an extraordinary political experiment because its members remained PDP governors while refusing to support the PDP’s presidential candidate. Wike eventually became closely associated with Tinubu’s presidential campaign in Rivers State. Other members of the G5 made different choices, demonstrating that the group was less a permanent political party than an instrument of political leverage.

The important lesson from the G5 was that party membership did not necessarily determine presidential loyalty. However, the Rainbow Coalition appears to be an expanded version of that political philosophy. The difference is that Wike is no longer merely leading a group of disgruntled governors within the PDP; he is attempting to construct a broader, cross-party network around a presidential candidate who happens to be the incumbent for, perhaps, his future political ambition.

What Does Wike Really Want?

This is the question behind much of the speculation. Wike says he wants Tinubu re-elected. He has repeatedly described his support for the President as unequivocal and says he is mobilising politicians from different parties for that purpose. In August, he spoke of a “larger Rainbow Coalition” emerging around Tinubu. But what happens beyond the immediate election?

Wike’s political calculation appears to involve preserving political relevance after 2027, regardless of the position he occupies. He has been a governor and is now a federal minister. When asked recently about his political future after Tinubu’s second term, Wike argued that relevance does not necessarily depend on holding public office. It depends, in his words, on how a politician relates with his people and how the people regard him.

That statement should not automatically be interpreted as evidence of a specific future presidential ambition, but it should not be ruled out. There is no basis for asserting that Wike has decided what office he wants next, but it does suggest that he is thinking beyond the present office. That is precisely where his political strategy becomes interesting. A politician who demonstrates that he can mobilise voters across party lines possesses a different kind of political capital from a politician whose influence depends entirely on occupying an elected position.

Why Are the APC Governors Uncomfortable?

The answer may be found in the difference between political influence and institutional authority. The APC governors possess institutional authority as they control state governments and, in many cases, party structures. Wike possesses a different asset: personal political networks built over many years, especially in Rivers since his Obiakpor days, together with the visibility and national platform that comes with being FCT Minister.

Wike knows what he is doing and he is bullish about it. He argues that being a governor does not automatically translate into unlimited political influence. He adds that what is important is the ability to deliver votes which is a provocative argument because it challenges the political power of sitting governors.

If Wike can say, in effect, you control the APC structure, but I can mobilise voters for the President outside your structure, then the traditional hierarchy becomes less straightforward. They do not necessarily have to oppose Wike personally, but they are clearly defending the principle that the APC, rather than an individual minister or cross-party coalition, should control the political machinery of an APC presidential campaign – a crucial distinction.

Rivers: the Political Laboratory

Rivers State provides the clearest example of why this contest matters. The bitter confrontation between Wike and his successor, Siminalayi Fubara, eventually escalated into a national constitutional crisis. On March 18, 2025, President Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State, suspended the governor, his deputy and members of the state House of Assembly, and appointed Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (Rtd) as administrator. The President said the intervention was necessitated by the prolonged political crisis and security concerns in the state.

Whatever one’s interpretation of the Rivers crisis, its political significance is difficult to ignore. It demonstrated that the relationship between Wike’s political structure in Rivers and the Tinubu presidency had become extraordinarily consequential. Let it be known that I disagree with Wike’s methods and his stranglehold on Rivers, leading to how he humiliated Fubara.

Now Wike says he intends to deliver Rivers State – and FCT – for Tinubu in 2027 which I criticised in my previous article. That raises an obvious question: who controls the political machinery that would deliver Rivers for Tinubu – the APC or Wike’s political network? The Rainbow Coalition potentially provides Wike with an answer.

And then there is Abuja

The FCT makes Wike’s current position even more unusual. He is no longer merely a former governor operating from his home state – he is a federal minister working at the centre of government and overseeing one of the most politically visible territories in the country. The State House currently lists Wike as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and he has now publicly claimed that he can mobilise support for Tinubu in the FCT and elsewhere through his political contacts which creates a potential parallel network around the President.

Are you still surprised at the source of the governors’ anxiety? If Wike’s Rainbow Coalition succeeds, it could demonstrate that President Tinubu does not have to rely exclusively on the APC governors to mobilise presidential support.

Conversely, if the governors prevail in insisting that all presidential mobilisation must run through the APC, Wike’s independent political architecture would have less room to operate. This is why the dispute matters.

How is President Tinubu going to dribble around the “obstacle course” like the famous Argentine footballer, Diego Maradona? Can Wike remain in the PDP and support Tinubu? Strictly speaking, Wike can maintain his PDP membership while supporting Tinubu. His political argument is that presidential, governorship and legislative elections are separate contests. But politically, the arrangement is unusual as APC leaders are insisting on a “Top to Bottom” strategy. Why didn’t Wike join the APC instead?

A PDP member campaigning for the re-election of an APC president while his party fields candidates against APC candidates creates an obvious contradiction from the perspective of party loyalty, but Wike does not see it that way and he doesn’t care. His position is essentially that his loyalty in the presidential contest is personal and political rather than determined by party affiliation. His PDP loyalists have now defended his right to mobilise for Tinubu while remaining in the party.

The APC governors, however, are looking at the same arrangement from the standpoint of organisational discipline. That is why both sides can look at the same facts and reach different political conclusions.

The Tinubu Dilemma

President Tinubu now occupies a delicate position. Wike has become a useful political ally because he can reach politicians and constituencies outside the APC. At the same time, the APC governors are indispensable because they control the formal structures of the governing party across the states.

Tinubu therefore has an obvious incentive to avoid allowing the dispute to become a permanent rupture. The President does not necessarily have to choose between Wike and the governors; he can seek to make both useful to his 2027 project. The more difficult question is whether Wike’s political ambitions and the governors’ institutional interests can coexist indefinitely.

This is where Reuben Abati’s reference to Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, particularly the famous admonition about not outshining one’s master on The Morning Show of Arise News, becomes an interesting metaphor. Wike’s visibility is enormous, while his political statements generate headlines. His FCT projects generate substantial publicity for him, and his clashes with political opponents attract national attention. But the political system ultimately revolves around the President.

The question, therefore, is not whether Wike is becoming too powerful in some absolute sense; it is whether his growing visibility and independent network eventually become difficult to accommodate within the formal political structure supporting Tinubu.

From G5 to Rainbow Coalition

This shift is clearly an evolution in Wike’s political strategy. The G5 was essentially an internal resistance mechanism created to utilise the influence within the PDP to challenge the party’s presidential direction. On the other hand, the Rainbow Coalition is potentially for external mobilisation: build a cross-party network to support a presidential candidate while allowing participating politicians to retain their separate party identities and interests.

The first strategy demonstrated Wike’s capacity to disrupt his own party’s presidential ambitions, while the second seeks to demonstrate his capacity to mobilise beyond party boundaries. Whether the Rainbow Coalition will become a durable political force remains to be seen. Its effectiveness will depend on organisation, personalities, candidate selection and, most importantly, how much space the APC leadership is prepared to give it which is now most unlikely.

Wike’s Rainbow Coalition, in my view, is aimed at mobilising a strong political base for himself and his supporters beyond 2027, positioning him as a kingmaker and influential godfather across party lines. For now, however, the battle lines are becoming clearer. The APC governors are saying support Tinubu through the party and do not create parallel structures that undermine APC candidates. Wike is saying my commitment is to Tinubu’s presidency, not necessarily to every APC candidate.

That is a fundamental disagreement over who owns political loyalty in an election – the party, the candidate or the individual politician. It is why the journey from G5 to Rainbow Coalition may tell us considerably more about Wike’s new political calculus – and the evolving architecture of power around Tinubu – than the colourful name of the coalition itself suggests.

Wike definitely has a long road to travel.

Ehi Braimah is a public relations specialist, marketing strategist and publisher/editor-in-chief of Naija Times and Lagos Post. He is a strong advocate for African prosperity and can be reached through: [email protected].