For over two decades, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike has been one of Nigeria’s most combative and consequential political actors. From Local Government Chairman in Obio-Akpor, to Chief of Staff to Governor Rotimi Amaechi, to Minister of State for Education under President Goodluck Jonathan, to two-term Governor of Rivers State (2015-2023), Wike has built a career on control, confrontation, and political survival.
His current chapter may be his most complicated.
Appointed Minister of the Federal Capital Territory by President Bola Tinubu in 2023, Wike remains a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) while serving in an All Progressives Congress (APC) government — an anomaly in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, though not entirely unprecedented. President Obasanjo once appointed AD’s Bola Ige, and President Yar’Adua co-opted ANPP figures, but Tinubu gave Wike a powerful portfolio, high visibility and enormous latitude.
After losing the PDP’s 2023 presidential ticket and failing to secure the vice-presidential slot, Wike formed the G5 governors group that worked against his own party and supported Tinubu. He then turned his attention to Rivers State, where he anointed Siminalayi Fubara as governor before falling out with him.
That feud birthed what Wike now calls the *Rainbow Coalition.*
Initially confined to Rivers, the Rainbow Coalition was Wike’s strategy of merging the structures he controlled — majority of the Rivers PDP, a faction of the Rivers APC seized through federal influence, and smaller parties used for local government elections — into a single political war chest loyal to him personally. The stated goal: support President Tinubu for re-election in 2027, while retaining the freedom to support different governorship and legislative candidates on other party platforms.
Wike describes it this way: “That is the essence of the rainbow coalition in Rivers State. We’ll look at where we have strength, compare notes and vote accordingly.”
But the coalition that was meant to be a life jacket is now looking like dead weight.
In September 2026, the Progressive Governors Forum led by Imo Governor Hope Uzodimma rejected the arrangement, declaring that APC governors would not support any external alliance that could weaken the party or confuse voters. Several APC state chapters followed, demanding that Wike formally defect to the APC if he is serious about Tinubu’s re-election. 87b8
Zamfara Governor Dauda Lawal openly told Wike to choose between APC and the Rainbow Coalition.
Wike’s response has been defiant. He insists he never approached the APC Governors Forum for any alliance.
“There is no day I went to the Governors’ Forum to align with any rainbow coalition… I have never sat with the APC Progressive Governors’ Forum,” he told ARISE News and TVC’s Journalists Hangout. He described the opposing governors as “politically lazy” and named Uzodimma, Kwara’s AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq and Ogun’s Dapo Abiodun as those opposed to him, while claiming governors of Adamawa, Edo, Kogi, Lagos, Akwa Ibom and Ondo have no issue. 4744
He maintains the coalition is not to destabilize parties but to bring together people from different platforms united by support for Tinubu. ece4
Critics argue the Rainbow Coalition has no ideological core like Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition of the 1980s in the US or Kenya’s NARC of 2002, but is purely a vehicle for maintaining relevance. Unlike Jackson, Wike is not running for president. Unlike NARC, it has no joint manifesto. Its only publicly stated goal is Tinubu’s re-election, with a caveat that it can field opponents against APC in other races — a contradiction APC leaders say is untenable. 8210
From splitting the PDP down the middle through endless litigation, to trying to deny Governor Fubara — who has now defected to APC himself — a second term ticket in favour of House Minority Leader Kingsley Chinda, Wike is fighting on multiple fronts: against his old party, against parts of his new allies, and against his own successor.
That is why the metaphor of a drowning man fits. The Rainbow Coalition was supposed to be his bridge between two worlds — PDP membership and APC power. Today, it has left him isolated in both.
