Rivers on Reverse
By Adams Abonu
From all indications, the political crises rocking the polity of Rivers State is yet to abate. In the spate of a dozen days, the Supreme Court had set the pace for Governor Siminilaye Fubara’s unceremonious suspension from office with a somewhat controversial judgement which placed the embattled gentleman on a collision course with an entitled political establishment within and outside the state.
What begun as an isolated disagreement between a political godfather and his supposed protege had festered into a conundrum, culminating in last Tuesday’s declaration of a State of Emergency in Rivers State and the consequent suspension of elected office holders from the state by President Bola Tinubu.
The road leading to this anticlimax in the acclaimed heartbeat of the nation was replete with dark gimmickry and deft innuendos. Governor Fubara, after a daredevil tackling of his political benefactor and predecessor in office, Nyeson Wike, murdered sleep and had since then slept with one eye opened. His tactics of warming up to the sensibilities of the greater majority of Rivers people and courting public sympathy in the process seems to have postponed his days of nightmares to this point. But the conglomeration of Ijaw irredentism, genuine altruism by a cross-section of the Rivers Society and the those disgruntled by the sheer dominance of Wike could not halt the onslaught on the emerging structure championed by Fubara.
Wike seemed to have waited rather loudly ( no apologies for his recurring media chats and his often vociferous vituperations ushered in by his music band at certain public outings) for his last laugh in this unfortunate episode. His capacity to secure a formidable structure that gave the suspended governor a run for his powers is a lesson in political maverick. How the FCT Minister was able to retain the bias of President Tinubu remains a classical example in how to galvanize a brand of gimmickry.
Upon a careful retrospection of the political crises in Rivers State, one would have to be fair to Wike to acknowledge that Governor Fubara breached the rules of power when he attempted to outshine the powers that brought him to be. It smacks of political opportunism to renegade on agreements that conferred comparative advantage once power is secured. Fubara has learnt his lessons in such a hard way thus far.
However the pendulum swings in the coming months, be that Fubara would swallow his ego and sort out differences with his estranged benefactor or have the doors of the Government House permanently shut at him, it’s in the interest of the actors to this show of shame to halt the reversal of development in Rivers State. Since the onset of this season of ignominy, every development effort in the state has been greatly encumbered, putting the people of the oil-rich state at the receiving of a thorny stick.
The appointment of a retired Air Vice Marshal to administer the state for an intervening period not withstanding, Rivers, and every state of the federation by extension, deserves democratic decorum. Sole Administration is a gross anomaly on a democratic dispensation and have every tendency to wane public trust in the governance process.
A beckoning responsibility comes for every voice of conscience to rise to this uncomely occasion and salvage whatever is left of our national democratic pursuit.
Abonu, a multimedia journalist, writes from Asokoro, Abuja.
