We must also give Minister Wike the benefit of the doubt and let him clarify the allegations made by Sowore. For someone who has the media at his beck and call, a public clarification of these startling revelations should not be hard. Wike is a public officer, and the last thing he wants is to be accused of stealing and diverting public funds
Only a few politicians in Nigeria have a penchant for courting controversy and revelling in the attention that media publicity brings like the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. The minister relishes the beam of the television studio klie light. He thrives on attention-grabbing kickers and riders of the national dailies. The ever-feisty and garrulous minister is in the news again. But this time, he is embroiled in what could herald a painful political setback or, as some of his traducers are already predicting, downfall: money laundering and property scandal.
Wike has mastered the art of using the media to disparage and demonise those he perceived to be his political adversaries and who are against his interests. Of course, the media is irritably complicit in his vainglorious, self-glorifying and mendacious public monologue that is mostly presented as open, honest and scrupulous interactive sessions. However, in his recent media outing, he went out of character and decided to pick a fight with someone who does not need a media right of reply before going on the offensive or do what Wike does to other people to him.
While weighing in on the fracas between activist Omoyele Sowore and the Nigerian government, Wike had blasted Sowore for calling President Bola Tinubu a criminal, adding that he should be thankful that the president is someone who respects and believes in the rule of law. Matters came to a head when Wike, during a media chat, denied personally buying a house in the United States of America after reports of his ownership of mansions in the country emerged.
The minister denied the report, saying Sowore was bribed to push such a narrative. He stated that he had never bought a house in the US and anyone with evidence to the contrary should present it. He also stated that the mansions being attributed to him, which are estimated to be around $2 million, were bought for his wife, Eberechi Suzzette Nyesom-Wike, who also serves as a Court of Appeal judge in Nigeria, and his children by his father and mother-in-law, stressing that claims of him splurging millions of dollars in misappropriated and embezzled public funds on mansions in the US are the work of his political opponents who are plotting his downfall.
However, Wike’s defence and justification of the landed property in the US is tardy, unconvincing and flimsy. As it happens, his attack on Sowore and accusation of bribery he levelled against the media personality turned out to be a miscalculation and poor judgment on the part of the minister as it sparked an investigation and relentless pursuit of the truth by Sowore which has produced a litany of paperwork trails revealing the truth about Wike’s family property in Florida. Wike, while defending his family’s ownership of these properties and at the same time distancing himself from any financial connections to them, fails to explain how his wife’s parents were able to pay $2 million in cash for the luxury mansions in a highbrow neighbourhood in the state of Florida.
In a series of posts on his X handle over the weekend, Sowore presented evidence showing that Wike indeed bought three houses in cash in Winter Springs, Florida. The properties were said to have been bought using his wife as a front and shared out among his children. Sowore also presented the Quit Claim Deeds that Wike and his Wife used to transfer the mansions to their children in other conceal the true owners of the properties and escape any form of scrutiny and investigation regarding the source of wealth of the owners.
A Quit Claim Deed is one of the simplest property transfer documents in U.S. real estate law. It allows one person, the grantor, to sign over whatever ownership interest they may have in a property to another person, the grantee. Crucially, it offers no guarantees the grantor makes no promise that the title is valid, clear, or even legitimate. In short, it transfers “whatever interest” the grantor has, nothing more.
Sowore had asserted that the transaction involving the purchase of the house and ownership status deployed to hide the source of income of the buyer amounted to money laundering and trafficking in stolen property, which is a serious crime under US law. Wike shelved his trip to the US for medical attention, a trip he was hoping to embark on using the upcoming United Nations General Assembly as a cover but Sowore’s revelation is said to have sabotaged the plan as he minister fears he could be arrested if he indeed steps into the US with an allegation of criminal activities hanging over his head.
He has also petitioned the Attorney General of Florida to look into the real estate properties traced to Wike as they were bought with illicit cash flow and laundered public funds.
Sowore’s allegations and revelations are damning but not all too surprising seeing as embezzlement and theft of public funds have become some sort of norm in Nigeria. Ideally, one would have expected that relevant authorities would by now swoop in and commence an investigation into the startling allegations against the government, but I don’t think many Nigerians expect much from agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
We must also give Minister Wike the benefit of the doubt and let him clarify the allegations made by Sowore. For someone who has the media at his beck and call, a public clarification of these startling revelations should not be hard. Wike is a public officer, and the last thing he wants is to be accused of stealing and diverting public funds and using them to buy properties in foreign countries. Sowore has presented what appears to be incontrovertible evidence of his corruption and grand larceny. Wike, as a matter of urgency and public interest, must respond with his irrefutable proofs of innocence. The burden of clarification is on him.
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