Tinubu’s involvement in Rivers State crisis

By Alabi Williams / posted 28 December 2023

The political crisis in Rivers State seemed like a child’s play when the inventors first tested the waters. It has now snowballed into a matter of national concern. President Bola Tinubu is concerned. Rivers State people, owners of the mandate politicians have recklessly abused since 1999 are beginning to demand accountability. All of Nigeria is concerned.

Last week’s intervention in the crisis by President Bola Tinubu has left the matter messier, perhaps worse than was imagined. Many are wondering whether that meeting summoned by the President was the best thing to do since the fireworks were ignited. If it was a matter of national interest, was the composition equitable, to achieve consensus; and did the organisers consider the consequences of a presidential interference after parties had gone to court to ventilate their grievances?

Observers are of the view that the judiciary still has a central role to play in deepening democracy, apart from ruling on questionable elections. Is it appropriate then for the President to meddle in state political matters that are already within the precinct of the courts?

For a start, this column had cautioned when trouble started on the night of October 29, 2023, that President Tinubu had already immersed himself in the Rivers State crisis and cannot be a trusted arbiter in the ensuing face-off between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesome Wike.

After the explosion that rocked the state Assembly complex, followed by the resolution of 27 members of the House of Assembly to impeach the governor the day after, godfather Wike and godson Fubara submitted themselves to Mr. President in the Villa, where it was purported that Tinubu had intervened and frayed nerves were calmed.

Many found that intervention, which unfortunately was applauded by vacillating leadership of the PDP Governors’ Forum, as the wrong thing to do. It was still a party affair then, even though Wike had been playing hide and seek with his party, so the president did not need to jump in. The intervention expected was for him to ensure that unaccountable federal might was not deployed to intimidate lonely Fubara into surrendering the people’s sovereignty.

Anywhere you find crooked politicians plotting to tamper with the organic system prescribed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic, you will see the Police aiding and abetting political shenanigans. The same Police had laid siege to the secretariat of the PDP in Akure, Ondo State, when members tried to demand accountability from Arakurin Rotimi Akeredolu, who was absent from office on account of ill health.

When President Tinubu eventually intervened in the Ondo impasse, the Constitution was still disregarded. But mother nature intervened and the Deputy Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, was restored to his rightful place. Why play politics with weighty matters when the Constitution has made it easy for the system to thrive?

When the crisis in Rivers degenerated and the 27 lawmakers who are loyal to Wike abandoned the PDP for Tinubu’s party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and Governor Fubara and his loyalists had gone to a Rivers State High Court to confirm Edison Ehie as the new Speaker, matters got messier and the president again decided to intervene. The original Speaker, Martin Amaewhule, and his deputy Dumle Maol, were told by the court to stop parading themselves as speaker and deputy speaker.

This columnist is not aware that specific calls were made for the President to intervene in the manner he has done. People were generally concerned that he needed to rein in his new friend, Wike and their collaborators, so that they do not fast-track a shipwreck of this fragile Republic.

When politicians become overfed and drunken with public resources, they use their hands to invite chaos and anarchy. Concerned Nigerians are merely asking the president to do the needful, not to allow democracy to collapse under his watch. Not to broker a tainted peace.

How could he broker peace when he is an interested party? An invitation for him to broker peace could as well mean asking him to preside at the funeral service of PDP in Rivers State. He stands to benefit from a further degeneration of the crisis.

In the early days of Wike’s revolt against PDP, Tinubu sort for ways to benefit. And he went on to cut deals with Wike during the campaigns and all that transpired in the course of the elections are well known to those who care to know.

Without announcing a coalition government, the president went on to appoint Wike as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). In street parlance, you couldn’t blame Tinubu for turning Wike into an ally. For a Tinubu who weathered bad storms as opposition leader, particularly in the hands of PDP, every opportunity to decimate a foe is a fair game. He cannot now become so generous to love peace, except to intimidate Fubara.

The outcome of the intervention has produced anger in the state because it does not mean well for democracy. The resolution did not ask the 27 members who abandoned their party to go back to PDP. It did not ask for a return to status quo prior to the insurrection, but was more interested in tightening the leash on Fubara and the resources of Rivers people.

The governor was misled into an ambush and made to sign away the freedom of the people. But the people have rejected it. Chief Edwin Clark and other leaders in Rivers State have rejected it and more revelations have shown that the meeting was a scam.

On whether the meddling makes constitutional sense, some notable Nigerians have commented. Former Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, thinks it’s pointless. According to the former minister, Tinubu has no constitutional role in both Ondo and Rivers states political crises. “Are those inviting the president to act in Ondo and Rivers states not aware that the president has no constitutional role in these matters?” he queried.

The lawyer charged Rivers political leadership to do the needful by adding, “we have amended the Constitution, so what is left to amend, except ourselves?” Fashola didn’t waste words. Those who have understanding will catch his drift.

Femi Falana noted that whatever intervention the president proffers on any situation must first be grounded in the provisions of the Constitution. He said he agrees with Fashola, that the President has no constitutional role in resolving the Rivers crisis and that whatever the President suggests should carry the weight of an advice. It is not binding.

Falana said the presidential reinstatement of the 27 defected members of the Rivers Assembly “is alien to the Constitution in every material particular. The seats of the cross-carpeting members have been declared vacant by the Speaker known to law. To that extent, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is mandatorily required to conduct the by-election once the ex-parte order issued by the Federal High Court last (penultimate) Friday, is quashed.”

While hoping for the President to decree a resolution into being, the 27 lawmakers had also gone to the Federal High Court, Abuja, to procure an ex-parte barring INEC from calling for fresh elections. They needed to be smart to have their cake and eat it.

Another senior lawyer, Dr Tunji Abayomi, insists that the President has constitutional role to play in bringing the crisis to an end. According to him, the President needed no ‘enumerated’ powers to bring about peace in the Federation or any part of it; that it is part of the incidental prerogative of the President to take steps to maintain peace anywhere and everywhere.

That position of Abayomi is contained in a press release he issued, very sound and illuminating, but not mindful of the fact that a president is a political animal who could instigate crisis from which he benefits. Leaving such a president with unfettered discretionary powers could be likened to prodigious powers exercised by traditional rulers in pre-colonial times, when the king could do no wrong, he was infallible. That can’t be democracy.

The moment Wike was sighted in the office of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, doing that loathsome dance in a video that went viral about two weeks ago, discerning minds smelt something dastardly was in the works.

The actors in that video did not mind that they occupy elevated offices in the land and that the onus is on them to show respect to Nigerians. But they spitefully pushed out the video in which they announced they had a mandate to stand on. But in their mid-life exuberance, they forgot the origin of that song, which was indeed solemn, after the late MKO Abiola was robbed of his June 12, 1993 mandate. These ones think they have conquered Nigeria and could desecrated high offices.

Nigerians are witnessing the partitioning of the country among political task masters. The scheme is to appoint vassals who would be brutal enough to prescribe another mandate for 2027. The road to the South-south is Rivers. The preparations have begun. It is up to the people to take ownership of democracy.

And it gets damning when the PDP is unable to intervene in its own affairs, surrendering the party to President Tinubu and Wike to balkanize. Some are asking, where is the presidential candidate of the party, where is Atiku Abubakar, where are the leaders of PDP?

If they continue this slow motion, there may be no platform to ply their trade come 2027, by which time one party rule will become manifest.

Note: This article was first published by The Guardian on 25th December.
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