2 days Ago By Guardian Nigeria
The events in Rivers State appear somewhat complex to grapple in one breathe and on face value, particularly the abrupt declaration of emergency rule by President Tinubu. It was thought that the Supreme Court’s ruling of February 28, 2025, in the consolidated appeals on the crises was sufficient to bring it to a close. No one expected an emergency intervention after that, but that did happen, leaving pundits with a number of conjectures.
There is the constitutional complication of the emergency rule, which lawyers and legal experts are still struggling to make sense of. Some think the procedures for emergency rule were not exhausted before it was announced. They do not see a correlation between political rascality of a few with an emergency rule that has grave and wider implications for democracy.
To make sense of the events, many now take solace in the politics, which unfortunately was vigorously downplayed in the President’s emergency declaration address. It is the meddling in the local politics of Rivers State by Abuja that fueled the crises. In the end, democracy is sacrificed.
And a mess is made of the law because what is presented as law via judgments from courts don’t make common sense to even unlearned ordinary folks. Some now rationalise that the imposition of emergency rule in Rivers State was a necessary shortcut to stem the reckless display of the rule of men, rather than the rule of law. That seems to make more sense than the resort to legal gymnastics.
Those who used their hands to fetch ant-infested firewood should expect the invasion of their home by lizards. One’s thinking is, as the judiciary became weakened due to manipulations by politicians and was perceived to be unable to adjudicate fairly and judiciously in the Rivers matter, aggrieved citizens thought it was game to apply self-help. That is a likely explanation for the attacks on oil and gas installations, to get the political class reasoning more correctly.
That’s most unfortunate and condemnable. But that appeared to be the most potent reaction that elicited the Presidency’s knee-jerk emergency declaration, more than the crises itself. The crises itself had lasted for more than one year, of which Abuja was largely complicit.
The oil industry is however central to Tinubu’s economic policy and it doesn’t appear he would stand by and allow local Rivers politics to cause him sleepless nights in that sector. To people outside government that have not abandoned their capacity for critical thinking, that offers a plausible explanation for the hurried emergency rule declaration, despite the judiciary weighing significantly in favour of the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike and his co-travellers. Wike and company gained the upper hand in the judgment of February 28.
That judgment should have brought an end to the crises, despite that it was not equitable. Even the president had hailed the judgment when he told leaders of the Pan Niger Delta Elders Forum (PANDEF), who visited him on March 11, 2025, to go home and counsel Governor Fubara to quickly implement the judgment. But he later changed his mind on March 18, 2025, when he declared the emergency.
Did the presidency and Wike realise almost too late that the heavens were indeed falling in response to the impeachment threat Wike had boasted of? Some faceless militants had warned in videos of reprisals to counteract Abuja’s meddlesomeness in Rivers politics. Wike called their bluff. It is now clear that only an emergency rule could rein in the madness, particularly for the 27 All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmakers who had made the state ungovernable since their defection.
Despite the court judgment that favoured them, they continued to be unruly, and had commenced impeachment proceedings to sack Fubara. They had no patience for the Supreme Court judgment to be implemented piece-meal; they wanted Fubara out at all costs. If they had acted magnanimously and decorously, they were already close to having the governor in their pockets, just the way Wike had programmed his succession.
Wike’s agenda had been to capture Rivers and make it his political launch-pad. But they were too much in a roguish haste. The week before the emergency declaration, Fubara didn’t appear to have more cards on the table.
He appeared willing to make compromises and actually confessed readiness to abide by that final judgment. Reports had it that he had commenced moves to reach out to the lawmakers, but they spurned him and were going for broke. What they did not countenance was the fact that Fubara had huge support among the people, even though he wasn’t boastful about it.
Not so enamoured of political power, Fubara had expressed willingness to step aside for the sake of Rivers people, whose allocations from Abuja had been brutally stopped. That meant he couldn’t attend to salaries and other needs of the state. He had been captured and tied to a stake.
Unlike Shakespear’s Macbeth, who promised to fight back valiantly like a bear when he found he was encircled by enemies, Fubara doesn’t appear to have balls for trouble. He is however principled enough not to surrender Rivers patrimony for plunder by a few. If he were selfish like the average politician, he could have purchased his piece of mind with filthy lucre and offer Rivers people as the object of sacrifice.
He hasn’t done that. For Wike and his camp, to which President Tinubu is obviously aligned, the plot to impeach the governor was a better and final way to conclude the Fubara menace. They urgently need a pliable and friendly governor in charge to conclude the funeral rites of Rivers chapter of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as 2027 unfolds.
But despite Wike’s boastfulness and their federal might, they refused to bargain with the possibility that their actions could pose risks to oil and gas infrastructure. Now they’ve all lost. Were the President to truly believe in the rule of law as he postured to PANDEF, he would have at least given sufficient time for the elders to report back on the assignment he gave to them when they visited on March 11.
On that Occasion, the President said: “This is a nation governed by the rule of law. I should not be here as President without a rule of law. I have total confidence in our judiciary.
We have expectations. Human beings can make errors. But once the court has spoken, that is it.
Please go back home and help implement the court rulings within the shortest possible time. I am putting the ball in your court. Help! Privately and openly intervene and counsel the governor.
Pursue path of peace and stability.” As matters turned out, President Tinubu did not allow the elders sufficient time to arrive Government House, Port Harcourt, before the emergency rule declaration. He did not allow them time to counsel Fubara, who in any case, had begun implementing the court judgment.
He had disbanded the Local Government executives that were elected on October 5, 2024, in compliance with the judgment. The Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC), had unveiled guidelines for fresh council elections come August 9, 2025. Fubara had also agreed to re-present the 2025 budget to the full House of Assembly as ordered, except that the lawmakers were not ready.
So, why was the President in a hurry to abandon the Supreme Court judgment if he truly believes in the rule of law, in favour of a militaristic emergency rule? It can only be for political considerations and to also protect revenues in oil and gas. And the President did not present an accurate account of the events that transpired in Rivers before his emergency rule declaration. Tinubu misrepresented the issues to suggest he hasn’t been part of the conspiracy to demobilise the opposition in Rivers by aligning with Wike.
During the 2023 elections and after he was appointed minister, Wike has done everything to remain the only man who is in charge in Rivers. In the emergency declaration speech, however, President Tinubu feigned ignorance of the origin of the crises, just like the judiciary, which is that 27 lawmakers had defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and announced their membership of the ruling party, APC at the centre. The President sounded like he was addressing an audience overseas that is unaware of the role Abuja has played in taking advantage of and compounding the crises.
In the speech, the President blamed Fubara all through, seeing nothing wrong with the antics of Wike and his camp. That’s most unfair of the leader of a democratic federal system, to display such bias against a governor, knowing the limitations of a state executive that is targeted for immolation by conspiratorial forces in Abuja. Tinubu had gone through all that and survived the plots to make Lagos ungovernable while he was governor.
It is the same measure Abuja is dishing to Fubara. It doesn’t look fair. The motely inexactitudes in Mr President’s Rivers emergency declaration speech, to say the least, is perplexing.
The opening paragraph is a lie. Let it be known that if the political class do not place democracy on the anvil of truth, both democracy and themselves might soon be gone. Those who have witnessed the trajectory of the Rivers crises may find it hard to locate any time or place where President Tinubu was “greatly disturbed” by the crises.
If Tinubu was ever disturbed, he could have nipped it in the bud. Abuja frolicked in it. The President also said this: “Like many of you, I have watched with concern the development with the hope that the parties involved would allow good sense to prevail at the soonest, but all that hope burned out without any solution to the crisis.
” Another lie. The Supreme Court had finalised on the crises. Is that not a democratic solution? And who are the parties? The allegation that Governor Fubara refused to take action to police oil pipelines is a mere alibi to justify killing democracy for six months in Rivers.
Nigerians aren’t all dumb!.
