Politics in Nigeria has always suffered from a chronic ailment: selective memory. But when a sitting governor begins to deploy moralistic language—calling fellow party men “vagabonds” and proclaiming himself “born again”—the disease graduates into farce. Governor Seyi Makinde’s recent rhetorical outburst against Nyesom Wike and others he described as “vagabonds who took over the PDP when the owners were not around” is not only laughable; it is historically dishonest and politically revealing.
Makinde’s metaphor raises a simple but uncomfortable question: who exactly are the vagabonds in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)? And perhaps more importantly, who are the landlords?
If political consistency, party loyalty, and organisational labour count for anything, then the casual demonisation of Wike as a “vagabond” collapses under the weight of verifiable facts.
Let us begin with history.
In 2014, five sitting PDP governors publicly rebelled against their own party’s sitting President at Eagle Square, Abuja, during the PDP national convention. That rebellion was neither subtle nor symbolic; it was televised, choreographed, and politically consequential. The defection of those governors later weakened the PDP structurally and electorally ahead of the 2015 general elections. If desertion in the heat of battle is the metric, what label do we reserve for that act?
Or take another example: a man who benefited from the PDP for eight uninterrupted years as Vice President, only to later align with opposition forces that helped dismantle the same party. Is that ideological evolution—or opportunism?
What of a former President who was rescued from prison by the PDP political machine, rehabilitated into national relevance, and elevated to the presidency for eight years—only to later tear his PDP membership card on live television and publicly ridicule the party that restored his dignity and fortune? If that is not political ingratitude institutionalised, then the word “vagabond” has lost all meaning.
Even more telling is the behaviour of former PDP Presidents who are still alive but have never attended a PDP meeting since leaving office. These men enjoyed the party’s platform at its strongest, but disappeared the moment the burden of opposition politics arrived. Are these the “owners” Makinde refers to? Owners who abandoned their house once the roof began to leak?
Against this backdrop, Wike’s political biography becomes inconvenient for Makinde’s moral sermon.
Nyesom Wike has never left the PDP since 1998. Through military-to-civilian transition, opposition years, electoral defeats, internal crises, and elite defections, Wike remained within the PDP structure. More critically, during the PDP’s post-2015 collapse—when many so-called landlords fled—Wike invested political capital, financial resources, and organisational energy to keep the party alive. Whether one agrees with his style or not, the empirical record shows that Wike was part of the PDP’s reconstruction, not its abandonment.
If that makes Wike a “vagabond,” then loyalty has become a crime and consistency a liability.
Now let us examine Governor Makinde’s own political journey—again, factually.
Seyi Makinde did not grow up politically in the PDP. He arrived in the party in 2018, after an extended and unsuccessful sojourn through other political platforms. His eventual emergence as PDP gubernatorial candidate in Oyo State was not the product of long-term party labour but of strategic elite intervention. This is not an insult; it is historical record.
Makinde’s governorship was made possible through the decisive backing of PDP power brokers, notably Nyesom Wike and Ayodele Fayose, at a critical moment when Oyo PDP was deeply fragmented. The story of that intervention is well documented in Nigeria’s recent political history. To pretend otherwise is to insult public intelligence.
It is therefore ironic—if not tragic—that the same Makinde now adopts a posture of spiritual and political rebirth, casting aspersions on those whose political investment paved his path to power. When he declares himself “born again” and distances himself from the “vagabonds,” one is compelled to ask: born again into what, exactly?
In Christian theology, rebirth is accompanied by restitution. A man who claims to have left Satan’s camp is expected to return what he took from Satan. By Makinde’s own framing, if the PDP under Wike was a camp of vagabonds, then logic demands that the fruits of that association—including the governorship title of “Your Excellency”—ought to be relinquished. One cannot renounce the source while retaining the benefits.
To continue enjoying the spoils of yesterday while condemning yesterday’s allies today is not moral renewal; it is political hypocrisy.
Beyond personalities, Makinde’s rhetoric reflects a deeper crisis within the PDP: the confusion between ownership and stewardship. Political parties are not private estates; they are collective institutions sustained by those who show up when things fall apart, not those who vanish when power is lost.
The tragedy of the PDP is not that “vagabonds” took over the party. It is that many self-proclaimed landlords abandoned it, only to return later as moral judges.
In the end, history is stubborn. It resists revision, no matter how sanctimonious the language deployed against it. Governor Makinde is entitled to reposition himself politically—that is his right. But he is not entitled to rewrite the past or insult the intelligence of Nigerians who remember who stayed, who left, and who rebuilt.
If the PDP today resembles a house with contested ownership, then the real question is not who the vagabonds are—but who abandoned the house when it mattered most.
And on that score, the record speaks far louder than today’s rhetorical satire.
