Just as the trending power-tussle over the political soul of Rivers State between the governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor Nyesom Wike, is daily assuming a seemingly unending tempo, so are fresh angles emerging to define it as one of Nigeria’s political black-spots, which wrap up the year 2023. Among the latest turns is the recent angle which features a purported second intervention last week by President Bola Tinubu, which was aimed at fostering a peaceful resolution of the matter. Conceding that his intendment was to sue for peace among the parties, the various versions of his intervention have however come to belie it as an exercise in delivering a poisoned chalice to Siminalayi Fubara in particular, before other attendees representing Rivers State. This was just as all that Nyesom Wike received was a tap on the wrist.
At least two factors point to this consideration. The first was the now contested eight point communique which has been trending as the terms (but cited by many as presidential directives in Tinubu’s own words) of the ‘peaceful’ resolution of the crisis by the President. The second factor remains the reported style of a garrison commander with which Tinubu conducted the peace meeting. According to several attendees who were witnesses to the session, President Bola Tinubu had reportedly brow-beaten Fubara, who in turn, accepted the situation with characteristic equanimity.
With respect to the terms of the communique, they fall into two categories. In the first category are those that require nothing beyond Fubara’s volition to resolve. These border on the restoration of the statutory perquisites of operation of the legislature, and include guaranteeing the funding provisions, as well as seating space since the actual demolition exercise is yet to affect the legislators’ offices. Others remain the guarantee of whatever liberties that are mandatory for the legislators to operate. And that may be where the point where the terms (or directives) from Tinubu to Fubara may be easy to implement without much ado.
Beyond the foregoing, whatever is contained in that communique remains a matter that Fubara is statute barred from exercising unfettered discretion. Hence to implement them as stated in the communique will entail breaching the extant provisions of the Constitution as well as valid pronouncements of courts of competent jurisdiction. They therefore constitute a dubiously intended booby-trap for the Rivers State governor. In the same context, by incorporating such conditions into the communique from a meeting with the President and pushing such down Fubara’s throat, betrays whoever authored the document as mischievous and ill intentioned. It is on this ground that the its offer by Tinubu to Fubara, constitutes a manifest instance of serving the latter a poisoned chalice, to discomfit him in office.
Of specific reference in this regard are the issues of the return of the decamped G27 (now G25) legislators, the reinstatement of Martins Amewhule as Speaker, the reappointment of the resigned commissioners and representation of the 2024 budget. Beyond the challenge of such reversals constituting a denial of recent history, they require significant legal gymnastics to resolve which will not manifest in a short time. Beside the legal gymnastics lies the labours such exercise will impose on Fubara in the governance of the state, including the gale of litigations that may deny him any sleep.
From the proclivities of Nyesom Wike in his relentless assault on Fubara’s tenure, the twists and turns in the Rivers State House of Assembly where the entire crisis started and the body language of President Tinubu, Fubara does not need a soothsayer to tell him that he is already surrounded by implacable foes that are after his political jugular, and will spare no effort at doing him in. That is why he has to see whatever gesture from them as a possible, proverbial ‘banana’ peel, presented to him to make him slip and fail. In this context is even the tempting offer of a second term in office if he plays along constitutes a booby-trap. This is where the lesson from the African proverb which says that ‘if the first child fails to crawl, how shall the second child run’ matter.
Given that the very debilitating strictures that have trailed Fubara’s first term as governor of Rivers State as orchestrated by none other than his predecessor to whom he had delivered extreme measures of subservience, can harangue him to this extent, the fact remains that all hopes of a second term for him at the behest of Wike and Tinubu are at best, pipe dreams. That is even if he decamps to the APC, as subtle inducements from them may suggest.
As recent developments point at, Tinubu as President is expectedly on a mission to boost the fortunes of the APC at the expense of any other party that offers itself for destruction. And Wike seems to be comfortable to play along with the agenda of destroying the PDP, as an act of vengeance for denying him the party’s presidential ticket for the February 25 2023, general polls. His appointment as the FCT minister was not a charity venture by Tinubu but a tactical move to decimate the PDP, and if possible overturn or discomfit Fubara.
Hence Tinubu and Wike are on a common mission which is of interest to observers of their working relationship. It is easily recalled that during Tinubu’s presidential campaign in Port Harcourt early in 2023, he had compared a possible working relationship with Wike as that “between a leopard and a chameleon”, where he was the leopard. Today, Tinubu the ‘leopard’ is the President of the country while Wike is the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
In the light of the foregoing the way forward for Fubara is to uphold the finest tenets of good governance in Rivers State. Given the outrages that had been the lot of Rivers State during the eight years of misrule by Nyesom Wike, there are numerous areas of governance which require urgent and substantial remediation.
Addressing these areas of mis-governance and securing the mass appeal of Rivers people, remains his salvation and prospects of continuity even with whatever opposition that may be mustered against him, come 2027.
