By Mohammed Bello Doka
Series: Special Reports — Civil Power vs Military Influence in Nigeria Author: Mohammed Bello Doka Platform: Abuja Network News Date: November 11, 2025
If there were an Olympic event for demolition, Nyesom Wike would have won gold, silver, and bronze — then held the victory parade on the rubble. Abuja has never seen a minister so fond of bulldozers, camera flashes, and the word “illegal.” He arrives at disputed plots as if he were auditioning for a reality show called Demolish This! — and Nigerians are back‑row ticket holders, watching the drama unfold.
When he marched onto Plot 1946 in Gaduwa, shouting down uniformed officers and accusing a retired naval chief of land grabbing, it looked for a moment like a righteous reckoning. He posed, he pontificated, he quoted planning regulations as though those pages were a secret scripture revealed only to him. "The law must take its course," he thundered — after which the minister insisted the course would be navigated on his watch, with helmets, megaphones and a camera crew.
But peel back the theatrics and the story grows considerably less glamorous. Wike, who claims to defend the "public interest," has been accused of converting revocation into reallocation — not to green parks or playgrounds, but to friends, family members, and political financiers. Plots allegedly revoked for being "non‑conforming" appear to reappear on allocation lists — now residential, now ready for private fences, now inconveniently next to a loyalist's new mansion. It is the kind of alchemy that turns civic virtue into a real estate portfolio.
The minister insists the land in question was reserved for recreational use and not for housing. Yet insiders and registry whispers say that once revoked, the same land was allegedly reallocated — not to public recreation — but to familiar names and company fronts. The minister's sanctimonious claims about regulating Abuja’s master plan ring hollow when the beneficiaries of revocation appear unusually well placed.
Now consider the human face: a retired officer who spent decades serving the flag, who survived deployments, overtime, and the slow violence of underfunded pensions, finds himself at the mercy of a ministry’s show trial. He did not insult the minister or his team. He did not assault anybody. He simply stood his ground — refusing to fold his arms while his lifetime’s labour was casually questioned. For that refusal, he was castigated, filmed, and publicly humiliated. The symbolism is sickening: loyalty rewarded with suspicion; sacrifice repaid with suspicion and a summons to explain the existence of one’s own home.
Meanwhile, Abuja’s invisible battalion of political operatives — the so‑called APC data boys and girls — reportedly sprang into action as if summoned by a ringtone labeled "Damage Control." Every social handle they own began to buzz: hashtags, coordinated takes, and calls for the heads of the uniformed officers who, according to available reports, were acting on orders from their chain of command. These operatives — alleged to be part of a network of youth influencers and party online brigades — were suddenly lawyers, judges, and executioners rolled into one: proclaiming guilt, demanding punishment, and broadcasting outrage.
Ironically, these same data activists were notably silent in the face of another humiliation for the nation — when the US president Mr. Donald Trump called Nigeria "a disgraced country." Where were the keyboard warriors then? Where was the spontaneous outrage and #NotDisgraced trending like it is today? Sources say that when the international insult arrived, many of these young virtuosos of indignation were conveniently quieter than a microphone turned off. They did not lead the national charge of rebuttal. They did not become the first responders of patriotic rhetoric.
Yet, when a young officer — one carrying out recalled military orders — refused to be cowed by a minister’s ungentlemanly manner, these very data cadres morphed into a hunger mob. The narrative shifted: the soldiers became the villains for not swallowing humiliation, while the minister became the aggrieved enforcer of law. The paradox is absurd: no courage shown to defend Nigeria’s dignity abroad, but unlimited ferocity in punishing men who stood up for their own dignity at home.
To be clear: the officer at Gaduwa was reportedly following orders. The officers did not, by available accounts, insult Wike or his team. They maintained discipline under provocation. Yet the online chorus allegedly demanded retribution — not because of any misconduct by the soldiers, but because the minister felt affronted that his theatrics had not produced immediate subservience. The digital storm that followed was more a show of loyalty to a political cause than a pursuit of legal clarity.
We must say: governance that relies on spectacle and on the mobilization of partisan data armies is governance that has lost the plot. If the minister genuinely believed the occupation was unlawful, the legal and administrative ladder was open: formal queries to Defence Headquarters, joint inspections, court orders, and a transparent publication of allocation history. Instead, we witnessed a street theatre of enforcement, followed by a cybermob calling for punishment.
And when the dust settled — or rather, when the cameras turned off — the pattern remained: revocation without transparent justification, reallocation with suspicious speed, and a narrative aggressively shaped by partisan voices. If one were cynical, one could say that the minister’s bulldozer is as much a social media rake as it is an earthmoving machine: it scatters dust for a while and leaves behind the outlines of a new patronage map.
So here is the ledger: Wike is a master of optics, accused of being a master of allocations. He preaches order but is allegedly selective in its application. He demolishes the weak, spares the well‑connected, and reallocates public land in ways that invite the most uncomfortable questions about motive and method.
If Wike wants to be remembered as a reformer, he should start with radical transparency: publish every revoked allocation, open the registry to genuine scrutiny, and allow independent audits of the FCT’s land administration. Until then, every demolition will be seen as a transfer, every revocation as a transaction, and every righteous photo op as a receipt for a favor.
In the theatre of Abuja politics, the minister who likes to play both judge and executioner must understand that the audience — a patient, sarcastic, and increasingly sceptical public — keeps receipts too.
Allegedly, Wike’s most persuasive skill is not law enforcement; it is the art of reallocating suspicion. And when the minister’s bulldozer is used to settle private scores while a retired officer watches his lifetime’s work reduced to rubble, the country is forced to ask, not politely, but loudly: Is Wike Wicked Or Working?