(Part two)
By Chris Agbedo
I traced the paradox from the football pitch to the political arena: the master dribbler who overwhelms his opponents may eventually find himself negotiating the momentum generated by his own game. The deeper question, however, is how such a reversal becomes possible. Robert Greene’s Law 2—“Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies” provides a revealing entry point. In politics, this Law offers another layer of irony, given that an enemy made useful does not cease to be an enemy; he may simply become a more powerful player within the strategist’s own game.
The law rests on a cold observation: political actors have interests, and former adversaries can sometimes be more predictable or useful than supposed friends. But Nigerian politics offers the reverse lesson. Be careful about the enemy you make useful. An adversary recruited into your strategy does not cease to have his own interests merely because your interests temporarily coincide. Indeed, his usefulness may depend precisely on the political independence that makes him difficult to control. That is Wike’s peculiar position. He can be pro-Tinubu without being pro-APC. He can be PDP without being anti-Tinubu. He can mobilise across party lines without accepting APC control. He can defend a presidential alliance while retaining a subnational political network. That is not ideological consistency. It is political autonomy. And political autonomy is precisely what a party-centric consolidation strategy finds difficult to accommodate.
Law 33: Every political actor has a handle*
Greene’s Law 33 – “Discover each man’s thumbscrew” – takes us directly back to The Handle Within.
Every political actor has something he wants to preserve. Office. Influence. Relevance. Succession.
Territorial control. Legacy. Political survival. The great strategist identifies those pressure points and uses them. But there is a reciprocal truth: Every political actor can learn the pressure points of the strategist. That is where power becomes reciprocal. A governor who depends on the President may nevertheless possess control over a state political machine. A minister may depend on presidential appointment while retaining an independent political base. A party may depend upon the ruling coalition for relevance while retaining its own ballot lines. A political godfather may publicly support the centre while privately protecting his succession arrangements. The apparent hierarchy of power is therefore never as simple as it looks. Everyone holds something.
Everyone needs something. Everyone fears losing something. That is the Hobbesian substratum of the Nigerian political game: self-preservation. Political actors do not have to hate one another to compete. They merely have to perceive that their survival interests are diverging.
The self-preservation instinct
This is why the APC Governors’ Forum’s reaction should not be reduced merely to an anti-Wike sentiment. The governors have their own electoral calculations. Their party is their institutional vehicle. Their candidates require party machinery. Their political futures depend partly on what happens in their respective states. So when Wike says the Rainbow Coalition is for Tinubu but not for APC candidates at other levels, the governors hear something different: a presidential coalition that could potentially compete with their party’s machinery. Their response is therefore predictable within the logic of political self-preservation. They have declared that they will not support an alliance that weakens the APC or its candidates. Wike’s response is equally predictable within the same logic. He does not want his political network subordinated to governors, whose political interests may differ from his own. So, the fight is not simply: Wike versus APC governors. It is: political autonomy versus organisational control. And beneath both lies the oldest political instinct: survival.
The Ouroboros problem
The ancient Ouroboros, the serpent consuming its own tail, offers another useful metaphor. A political movement can become so absorbed in consolidating itself that its greatest energy is eventually spent managing the conflicts generated by its own consolidation. The opposition is weakened. The ruling coalition grows. The ruling coalition grows so large that its internal interests multiply. The larger coalition then requires greater discipline. Greater discipline generates resistance. Resistance produces competing structures. Competing structures are denounced as threats to party unity. The effort to suppress them produces further political mobilisation. And suddenly the political system is consuming itself. That is the Ouroboros problem. It is also the Handle Within problem. And now it is becoming the momentum problem.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Goethe’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice offers another classical parallel. The apprentice learns enough of the master’s technique to set the broom to work. The broom obeys. Then another broom appears. And another. The work multiplies until the apprentice can no longer control the forces he has unleashed. The political equivalent is familiar: a strategy works so well that it produces more consequences than the strategist intended. Defections produce more defections. Defections weaken opposition parties. Weak opposition parties produce new coalitions. New coalitions generate fears within the ruling party. Those fears generate counter-mobilisation. Counter-mobilisation creates new alliances. And the political machine that was designed to simplify the electoral field begins making it more complicated. That is the political sorcery of success.
Law 35: Timing
There is also the question of timing. The closer 2027 comes, the more every political actor begins thinking beyond the immediate election. What happens after 2027? Who succeeds whom? Who controls which state? Who controls which party? Who possesses the machinery to negotiate the post-election settlement? Who survives if today’s coalition changes tomorrow? This is why political actors preserve options. Wike’s Rainbow Coalition can be interpreted as an attempt to preserve precisely that optionality. He says, in effect: I will support Tinubu for President while retaining political space elsewhere. That may infuriate the APC governors because it denies them the simplicity of a single command structure. But politics rarely remains simple for long.
Law 48: Assume formlessness
Greene’s final law – “Assume formlessness” – is perhaps the most interesting counterpoint to a highly centralised political machine. The more rigid a political structure becomes, the easier it can become to anticipate. The more flexible an opposing network becomes, the harder it is to contain. Wike’s coalition is deliberately difficult to classify. Is it PDP? Not exactly. Is it APC? He says no. Is it opposition? Not if its declared purpose is to support Tinubu. Is it pro-government? Yes. Is it a party? No. Is it an electoral alliance? Essentially. That ambiguity is its political weapon. It refuses to stand where the conventional political map expects it to stand. And that is why the APC governors are reacting so sharply. A party can discipline its members. How does a party discipline an alliance that does not belong to it? That is the puzzle.
The legendary dribbler reaches the penalty area
And now we return to the football field. Tinubu has demonstrated extraordinary political dexterity. He has recruited. He has realigned. He has absorbed. He has weakened rival structures. He has assembled an unusually broad governing coalition. But Greene’s Law 47 supplies the warning: Do not go past the mark. The first objective may have been to win. The second became to dominate. The third may have become to eliminate meaningful opposition. But every additional layer of political domination produces additional actors whose interests must be managed. At some point, the strategist’s problem ceases to be: How do I defeat the opposition? It becomes: How do I keep my own coalition from fighting over the spoils of victory? That is the point at which the dribbler begins to encounter himself.
From The Handle* *Within to the Momentum Within
This is where the earlier The Handle Within argument finds its sequel. The handle within is the internal mechanism through which power can be opened, redirected or destabilised. The momentum within is what happens when that internal mechanism has been activated so repeatedly that the political machine develops a trajectory of its own. And that trajectory is now visible. Wike says Tinubu knows about the Rainbow Coalition. The APC governors say they will not support arrangements that undermine their party or its candidates. The PDP says Wike has the right to support Tinubu while the party contests other elections. The President sits at the intersection. That is the political geometry. And it is an extraordinary one. Because if Wike is right that Tinubu knows and accepts the Rainbow Coalition, then the APC governors are challenging a political arrangement they cannot fully control. If the governors are right that the coalition threatens APC candidates, then the President’s wider electoral machinery contains a structural contradiction. Either way, the issue cannot be dismissed as mere political noise.
The own-goal paradox
An own goal is different from an opponent’s goal. The opponent does not have to defeat you. You merely have to redirect the ball in the wrong direction. That is why the metaphor is so powerful.
Tinubu does not need to be defeated by Wike for the current strategy to produce an unintended consequence. The political machine does not need to collapse. The APC does not need to lose its governors. The PDP does not need to suddenly become united. The opposition does not need to become stronger than the ruling party. The point is subtler: a strategy designed to maximise control can reach a point where managing the consequences of that control becomes more difficult than achieving the control itself. That is the danger of political overreach. That is the warning embedded in Greene’s Law 47. That is the logic of The Handle Within. And that is the irony of the dribbler.
The game is bigger than the player
There is another lesson here for Nigeria. Political parties are not merely containers for politicians.
They are supposed to provide competing platforms through which citizens can make choices. If every political difference is eventually absorbed into one dominant structure, electoral competition can become less about alternative visions and more about negotiating positions within a single political ecosystem. That may produce temporary political stability. It may also reduce the quality of democratic choice. The present Wike controversy therefore deserves attention not merely as an elite quarrel. Its larger question is: Can a presidential coalition remain broad without becoming a mechanism for party monopolisation? And the corresponding question for the opposition is equally important: Can political actors support a presidential candidate without surrendering the institutional independence necessary for genuine electoral competition? Those are questions for Nigerian democracy, not merely for Tinubu, Wike or the APC governors.
The final dribble
The legendary dribbler’s greatest test is not whether he can beat the defender. It is whether he knows when the dribble has done its work. There is a moment when the ball must be released. There is a moment when another player must take over. There is a moment when continuing to dribble becomes unnecessary risk. That is Greene’s deepest warning about victory. Know when to stop. For political power, this means recognising that the destruction of every alternative is not necessarily the same thing as the consolidation of democracy; that a coalition of thirty governors is not the same thing as thirty governors sharing identical interests; that defections do not abolish ambition; that political loyalty does not erase self-preservation; and that an ally’s usefulness does not make him controllable. The opposition may be fragmented. The ruling coalition may be enormous. The electoral machinery may appear formidable. But underneath it all are human beings calculating their futures. And human beings with political futures do not remain permanently programmable. That is the handle within. That is the momentum within. And that is the great paradox of political mastery: the more successfully you control the game, the greater the danger that the forces generated by your own control begin to control the game. The ball keeps moving.
The dribbler keeps moving. The political machinery keeps moving. Until suddenly the player looks up and discovers that the goalpost has changed – or, worse, that he has been running towards his own. The legendary dribbler may yet beat every defender on the field. But there is one defender no strategist can permanently eliminate: the consequences of his own strategy. And if the momentum of the game becomes stronger than the hand directing it, the final outcome may require no opposition goal at all. An own goal can be the only outcome!
(Concluded)
