By Boma West
Nyesom Wike has once again reached for insult instead of argument. Responding to questions about a loan he allegedly secured without National Assembly approval, the FCT Minister chose not to address the substance of the allegation raised by Senator Ireti Kingibe. He called her an illiterate. He said she has nothing to offer the people of the FCT. He dismissed her as an “inferior” unworthy of his attention.
This is not the language of a public official confident in his record. It is the language of a man who cannot answer a straightforward question about accountability and would rather attack the person asking it. Kingibe’s allegation was specific: that a loan was taken without the legislative approval the law requires. That is a matter of process, documentation and public finance. Wike’s response offered none of that. Instead of pointing to budget lines or National Assembly records that would settle the matter, he offered condescension.
There is something telling in the choice of insult itself. Branding a sitting senator “illiterate” is not just personal; it is dismissive of the institution she represents and, by extension, of the FCT residents who elected her. Kingibe holds public office through a democratic process. Reducing her to an insult because she asked an uncomfortable question suggests that Wike views scrutiny itself as an affront, something to be shut down rather than answered.
His claim to be “above” reacting to her does not hold up against his own words. A man truly above the fray does not spend a press briefing detailing why a rival has “nothing to offer,” predicting her political demise, and naming her preferred successor. That is not indifference. That is a man visibly rattled by a challenge to his authority, dressing up irritation as superiority.
There is also a pattern worth naming. Wike has built a reputation for combative exchanges with those who question him, from party colleagues to state officials to now a senator representing the same territory he administers. Each time, the response leans on personal attack rather than public explanation. For a minister overseeing the capital’s budget and infrastructure, that pattern should concern residents more than any single insult does. Accountability cannot function if every question is met with ridicule instead of records.
Kingibe may or may not return to the Senate in 2027, as Wike insists she will not. That outcome belongs to voters, not to a minister’s press briefing. What voters deserve in the meantime is clarity on how public funds are borrowed and spent, not a lecture on who is fit to ask about it. Until Wike answers the loan question directly, his insults will read less as strength and more as evasion dressed in bravado.
If a public officer cannot withstand a question without resorting to name-calling, the issue is not the person asking. It is the officer’s discomfort with being held to account.
