• Suspended governor’s absence on election day raises concerns
• Massive voters’ turnout in rural communities
• APC wins in first declared result
Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike has said that Rivers State is only a step away from the lifting of its emergency rule.
This, he said, followed the successful conduct of the local government elections conducted in the state yesterday.
Wike, the immediate past governor of the state, said with the emergency rule due to expire on September 18, suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara and members of the state House of Assembly “will come back to their job.”
He spoke to reporters soon after casting his vote at about 11:15am in Rumepirikom, Ward 9, Unit 007 in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area.
The elections were conducted across the 23 local government areas.
It was generally peaceful.
Turnout of voters, though massive in the rural communities, was low in the cities.
Port Harcourt and Obio-Akpor were devoid of their usual hustling and bustling as many residents chose to stay indoors.
Apart from regular patrols by security agencies, especially the police and persons on essential duties, other vehicles were off the roads in compliance with the restrictions on human and vehicular movement by the police.
The ever busy Port Harcourt Slaughter Road, Ada George, Elekahia and other areas were deserted while all markets, malls and other business areas were shut down.
Youths were seen playing football on major roads.
But it was a different story in the rural areas, particularly Ogoni communities like Baroko, Bera, Bidera and Biera, where opinion leaders mobilised residents to the various polling units to cast their votes.
A former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Prince Chibudom Nwuche, was seen monitoring the exercise as an election observer.
However, suspended Governor Fubara was not sighted in Port Harcourt or his community in Opobo/Nkoro Local Government Area.
His ward 5 in Opobo-Nkoro was said to have witnessed little voting activity.
It was also learnt that leaders of the disbanded Simplified Movement across the state stayed away from the elections
Sources said Fubara was out of the country.
The Sole Administrator, Vice-Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd), went round to monitor the election.
He was seen moving around polling units to observe the process and to ensure that the exercise was peaceful and orderly.
The FCT Minister described the exercise as peaceful.
He played down the low turnout of voters in places like Port Harcourt and Obio-Akpor, saying: “When you go to commercial areas, you don’t expect a large turnout of people. But when you go to residential areas, you expect a huge turnout.
“Particularly as I am here now, this is my community; you can see the large turnout. So it is in other areas.
“If you go to the rural areas, you expect more participation. For those people who are non- indigenes of Rivers State, they feel they don’t have any one participating in election.
“I am very happy with the turnout of people. I have got reports from the rural areas that people came out to exercise their franchise.”
Wike said since the election was conducted in accordance with all legal processes, there was nothing to worry about in the actions of some aggrieved persons.
He credited President Bola Tinubu for the successful conduct of the election.
His words: “We have to thank the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for making sure that this election is conducted.
“First of all, if election is not conducted, you know the Supreme Court had said there is nothing like technical committee, and if there are no elected people, funds will not come from the Federation Account to the local government councils, and that means that if the emergency rule is lifted without local government election, we would still have the same problem.
“Now that the local government election has been conducted, it means that there are elected people. Therefore, they will get funds directly from the Federation Account.
“Everybody is coming out for this election in order to stabilise the grassroots.
“We are very glad we are conducting this election, and at the end of the day, the elected people will emerge and sworn in, and we know that we have elected people.”
“I am very happy. It means that people identify with the election. You have not heard of any violence. You have not heard of the carrying of ballot boxes.
“You see that the electoral materials are there. People are there casting their votes. As far as we are concerned, the election is very peaceful.
A suspended Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member of the House of Assembly, Igwe Aforji (Eleme Constituency), acknowledged the orderly conduct of the election.
“I commend the organisers of the election. I can confess to you that we have never had it this good at the grassroots level. It has manifested today that the people are interested in knowing who will be their chairmen and councilors,” he said.
He also hailed the people of Eleme for coming out en masse to take part in the election.
He said: “I believe that nobody will contest (the result of) this election, because it reflects the wish of the people.
“The turnout shows that everybody wants the candidate of the APC and I believe that he is cruising to victory. He is a good product.
“Nobody will want to contest this election because even me, as a PDP member, I know he is going to win.”
The APC chairmanship candidate in Gokana, Confidence Deko, described the election as free, fair and most credible.
He said: “It was a peaceful election we had around here. What you see here is massive. That is to tell you how the people embrace the election.”
The South-South Chairman of APC, Victor Giadom, said the orderly conduct of the election was a sign of better things to come in 2027.
He said: “This is a sign of what will happen in the 2027 general elections. The election was peaceful. There was no violence.
“We have a united front for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu where all shades of political opinions come together to foster stability and the future appears to be exceedingly bright.”
Sole Administrator Ibas, in a statement signed by the Senior Special Adviser on Media, Rivers State Government, Hector Igbikiowubo, expressed profound satisfaction at the peaceful and orderly conduct of the local government election.
He described it as a decisive and positive step towards restoring full democratic governance at the grassroots level.
Ibas said he was highly encouraged by the commendable conduct of voters and election officials, which he said created a calm and secure atmosphere for the exercise.
Ibas said: “I am very happy with what I have witnessed today. The process has been notably peaceful, from the significant turnout to the orderly conduct of both voters and election officials.
“I am confident that at the end of the day, we will have a credible set of results that we will all be proud of as a state.”
He said situation reports from across the state corroborated his firsthand observations, pointing to a smooth, credible and largely incident-free exercise.
“Generally, the situation has been calm and seamless across the state.
“We have not received any major negative report, which is a testament to the collective desire for peace and normalcy.”
Ibas said that the people of Rivers had unequivocally shown their desire to elect a legitimate leadership that they could identify with at the local level.
He insisted that the successful poll was in direct alignment with the primary objective of his mandate to stabilise the state and return it to democracy.
He said: “Certainly, all indigenes of Rivers State want and deserve grassroots leadership they can call their own. That is what this process represents.
“For me, facilitating this foundational tier of democracy is a core objective of my mandate: to put the state back on its stable, democratic path and to empower its people.”
The state of emergency was declared on March 18 by President Tinubu following months of a running battle that pitted Fubara and his supporters against Wike and his supporters including the majority of the state’s lawmakers.
In the heat of the crisis, the suspended governor ordered the demolition of the state House of Assembly complex and recognised four members of the state House of Assembly who were loyal to him as constituting the legislative arm.
Some explosions also occurred in the state following threats by some people to cause trouble on account of the crisis.
The Supreme Court, in a February 28, 2025 ruling in respect of about eight consolidated appeals on the political crisis in the state, said: “A government cannot be said to exist without one of the three arms that make up the government of a state under the 1999 Constitution as amended.
“In this case, the head of the executive arm of the government has chosen to collapse the legislature to enable him to govern without the legislature as a despot.
“As it is there is no government in Rivers State.”
Tinubu had said in a broadcast: “Having soberly reflected on and evaluated the political situation in Rivers State and the Governor and Deputy Governor of Rivers State having failed to make a request to me as President to issue this proclamation as required by section 305(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, it has become inevitably compelling for me to invoke the provision of section 305 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State with effect from today, 18th March, 2025 and I so do.”
Consequently, the Governor, his deputy, Mrs Ngozi Odu, and all elected members of the House of Assembly of Rivers State were suspended for an initial period of six months and Vice Admiral Ibokette Ibas (rtd) was nominated as Administrator to take charge of the affairs of the state.
Three months after the emergency rule went into effect, Tinubu convened a high-level peace meeting at the State House in Abuja, bringing together key actors in the conflict for a rare face-to-face dialogue.
At the closed-door meeting were Fubara, Wike, suspended Rivers Speaker Martins Amaewhule, and several other lawmakers embroiled in the dispute.
Wike confirmed later that the parties to the Rivers State dispute had settled their differences and machinery had been set in motion for the restoration of all suspended democratic activities and institutions.
APC wins in first declared LG poll result
Early results yesterday showed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) had established a massive lead following the ongoing computation of the local government elections.
It was gathered that the APC was cruising to victory in 20 local government areas while the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was doing well in three.
Already, the APC had been declared winner of the Tai Local Government Area.
APC in a declared result was said to have polled 70,080 to defeat the PDP, which came a distant second with 1,245 votes.
The total valid votes were declared as 72,770; rejected votes, 326 while total number of votes was 73,096.
