When the row between Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, and his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), spilled onto the streets after the party’s presidential primaries in May, I argued that to solve Wike, one had to first fix the candidate, Atiku Abubakar. In light of Wike’s no-holds-barred interview last Thursday, things may have fallen apart, irretrievably. That interview, perhaps only comparable in seismic scale and onomatopoetic resonance with Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, has shaken the PDP to its foundations. The fallouts may well remain the biggest threat to the PDP’s electoral chances next year. But what was the point, really?…

From today, political parties in Nigeria will be free to flag off presidential, governorship, federal and state assembly campaigns by sticking posters on every wall, saturating the airwaves with campaign songs and noisy messages, holding mass rallies, knocking on everyone’s door, filling up buses and trucks with “supporters” shouting themselves hoarse, floating support groups of women, students and traders, hurrying to the palaces of traditional rulers that they had not visited since the last election, endlessly attending marriage and naming ceremonies, consulting babalawos, endless press releases and conferences, launch tirades and counter tirades on social media, generate an avalanche of…