Wike Vs Sirika: The Strangers By Sam Omatseye

Round one: Wike hits Sirika. Sirika falls, and grumbles. Wike, never smiling, hits again in court, and smells blood.

The audience hails and boos, awaiting round two. Meanwhile, Wike belches and allows himself a half smile, a cynical crease on his cheek.

To some, it is an issue between a governor with a scratchy voice and a minister with a muffled voice. To others, it is a wrestling match between a bristling David and hectoring Goliath. Even others think it is an atavistic test of federalist will as to whether the centre should hold or hold off.

But the matter is never open and shut. Matters like this tend to push people into a binary stand-off. Some say Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike is right, others say Wike is peevish, his soul rots with malice because he cannot get the same money flowing to Lagos State.

The shadow war is on federalism. For sure, the Buhari administration has never been an admirer of the federalist idea, and has therefore never pursued any law or bill that would concede its powers to any constituent part. So, it has been easy for it to ignore Soyinka, Falana, et al, when asked to restrain from unilateral shutdowns.

The argument for the presidency has been simple: this is an unusual time. We cannot afford the luxury of law when nature is mowing down our civilization. Many, including this essayist, agree with Buhari because Covid-19 respects no legal niceties in its onslaughts. Not even a behemoth like the United States. Wike seems to paying the centre back in its anarchist coin.

So, just as the federal government was closing down Lagos and Abuja, some state governors were doing so, too. We were, as it were, back to the state of nature. Or, shall we say, back to the nature of the state. Everybody was going to take care of its territory. Wike, therefore, announced a shutdown of his state and dared anyone, including the centre, to violate.

That led to scene one of the ongoing drama. Caverton Helicopters flew in some expatriates, and Wike saw an affront. The centre cooperated with him in the commissioner of police and the commander of the Air force base. The centre did not hold for Hadi Sirika, the minister of aviation. Two key federal figures embraced Wike. In the Jonathan era, Wike had ironically challenged his predecessor in a contempt of federalism when he, too, was a minister. Coronavirus, though, did not flare then.

He got two pilots arrested, shut down Caverton’s office, and sued them to court, offering to testify when the case opens. If we are in a state of nature, whose state is it? Is it the Hobbesian one where it is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short?” Or is it Rousseau’s where it was more neutral seeking all to come together for courtesy and peace? Or is it Locke’s Christian world view of Adamic cooperation? In the end, most philosophers, including John Rawls, saw the state of nature as reason.

Reason is what should prevail now. Ego is Hobbes. If both sides cannot agree on federalist reflexes, it means reason should prevail. For one, Wike was in his right to demand that the centre ought to notify his office that such a flight was bound to his state. That is why the constitution calls him the chief security officer. Two, in an era of testing, why would the minister not insist that those they were allowing to move from state to state were certified free of Covid-19 before travelling and also letting the state know that?

The minister’s assertion that the governor puts the CP and the commander in jeopardy may be right. They ought to clear from the centre. They report to the centre, not the state. But it reflects the odds and awkwardness of the constitution, which presumes a courtesy too refined for our temperament. So, Wike as a lawyer may be looking at life before law. We need to have people before the law.

Wike has been accused of not sorting it out with the federal government before his action. They are right. That is where the law of nature segues from Hobbes to Rousseau. We don’t want what Hobbes calls “a war of all against all.” That will help no one.

There was something boorish about Wike’s act. His resort to the court also means he has jettisoned the state of nature and turned it into his own version of reason. But to echo Shakespeare’s Shylock, “Is that the law?” We should find out. At least, the Rivers State Governor has bowed to the rule of law, even if he seems to be trying to choreograph it. If it goes as far as the Supreme Court, it may be out of his hands.

But what we want is not the state of nature the Hobbes style, but the reason style. It is a matter that could have been resolved by a phone call. Maybe we don’t want such phone dialogues. Each may spew out venom over the waves. But it is like the fight between couples. They are squabbling over whether the door should be locked or not, but the beef is deeper than that. It is just a symptom of a deeper grudge. Wike has been angry with the centre and the centre has been ignoring Wike. It is a grudge of strangers, some partisan pus.

When Novelist Albert Camus wrote The Plague, it was less about a scourge than a metaphor. It reflected many aspects of society other than rats infecting people who were dying. It was about human beings bringing out their deeper faults and characters in the sewer of their beings, a reflection that while the disease may be a stranger, the real strangers were the people who lived in the town of contagion during Nazi occupation. Ironically, Camus also wrote a novel called The Stranger. Pharaoh was not evil before or after the plagues but in spite of them.

In all, Wike and Sirika, like Camus’ characters, are at war with perceptions of propriety. At a time when law is luxury, ego should give way to a level head. There is still room for that. And that can be done within hours of shuttle diplomacy.

We expect to see that. The real virus is not some pesky contagion from Wuhan, but us. We cannot sit at table to wipe the microbes out of our robes. What should have started as a courtesy is now stinking like a corpse.

So, the fight between the centre and state is not what law applies, but who wants to be right. But if the matter is about saving lives, then Wike is right. People came before civilization, and no care is too much to prioritise the species. It may be an emotional reaction but laws do not respect contagion and contagions do not wait for laws. So, in the last instance, the Rivers State governor probably did not want to take chances. If ego drives Wike here, the facts favour him. Life precedes law.