Tag: Fubara

In what seems like a coup de main last Wednesday, Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara got his three loyal state legislators to elect a speaker, Victor Oko-Jumbo, conduct plenary in Government House where the governor had brusquely relocated the legislature, affirm the ‘illegality’ of the 25 or 27 pro-Nyesom Wike lawmakers through a Justice C.N. Wali ruling, and get the All Progressives Congress (APC) scurrying to rein in the feral cats set among their flailing pigeons. The crisis began few months after the inauguration of Mr Fubara who appeared disinclined to toe the line of his predecessor, Mr Wike. Reminiscent of the burning of the German Reichstag in 1933 before World War II, the parliament building in Port Harcourt was soon put to the torch and reasons conjured to castrate the 27 pro-Wike lawmakers. The ensuing stalemate has splintered the state and helped to bring out the true character and mettle of the state’s leading politicians and elders. The picture that has emerged has, however, been ugly and most dispiriting.

Rivers State and the rest of the country have been curiously fixated on the superficiality of who is right or wrong in the drama, with political partisanship and to some extent pecuniary interests mostly determining the sentiments of observers and analysts. The state is consequently entwined in a legal maze inspired by a judiciary that is clearly in need of salvation from both ineptitude and partisanship. Nigeria is not alone in this morass. The muck exists everywhere, but Nigeria’s political experience in the past few years, especially typified by conflicting judgements in Rivers and Kogi, has been most baffling. Rivers is not the first state to go down that chute; other states have, and for different reasons. Whoever emerges winner at the end of the maelstrom is unlikely to inspire the country or leave a great precedent, for both leaders and followers in the state are trapped in the shallow and pedantic politicking and reasoning that have blighted Nigeria for decades. It remains to be seen how a just and fair consideration of Section 109 (1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution will help the combatants in Rivers State cut the Gordian knot. Indeed the suits in respect of the legitimacy of the defecting lawmakers are still in court, but Mr Fubara has unconstitutionally cut to the chase and together with his loyal three passed a befuddling judgement on the recalcitrant 27. Riding on the wave of public sentiment, the governor is not ruffled by the anomaly of subordinating the parliament to his whim.

Anytime he steps out for a public function, the governor feels bound, among other official assignments, to mention his misunderstanding with his predecessor who is also the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister. The conflict between the two men has deepened and probably calcified, defying presidential intervention, and now sucking in all kinds of parasites and opportunistic friends and vengeful enemies. Mr Wike, in turn, feels obligated to respond, often hysterically, to his successor’s provocations, barely resisting for more than a week or two the temptation to say nothing. Left unchecked, the brickbat between the men may leave the state hurtling towards a tragic and fiery denouement.  While the FCT minister has been sturdy in his responses, Mr Fubara has sometimes been compellingly poetic and colourful in his declination to govern the state on ‘bended knees’, or allowing anyone, meaning Mr Wike, to take the place of God.

There is nothing dignified about the leadership tussle in Rivers. Though many Riverians and public commentators have filed emotively behind the two men, and are in most cases being more Catholic than the Pope, it is uncertain that they really appreciate the substance and many dimensions of the quarrel or what the conflict portends in the state. The tussle is heavily nuanced, and it is even doubtful whether the two leading combatants quite appreciate what they are fighting over. To the Rivers State public, the conflict is either about Mr Wike attempting to muscle the governor into submitting to a godfather, or about Mr Fubara too hastily breaking ranks with his mentor and the school of thought bequeathed the state. Some other Riverians suggest that the fight may actually be political, involving the governor betraying his mentor, reconciling with political enemies, and subverting the state’s ruling party structure. Perhaps the fight consists of all these elements. How the war is fought and won may, therefore, probably influence the direction of Rivers politics in 2027, including determining which party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) or Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), gets the upper hand in the months and years to come.

Neither Mr Wike nor Mr Fubara has framed the conflict in the imposing and dispassionate sense capable of reflecting on the state’s politics and politicians. Perhaps it is not in the place of any external commentator to determine for the two politicians what to fight over and how, but the warriors will expectedly acknowledge and defend the factors that shape and influence their politics. They have framed the fight as prejudiciously as they can, in line with their limited perception of issues and simplistic worldview, and they will probably fight the war to the bitter end from those narrow perspectives. But of the two, and despite his hysteria and failings, not to say his hectoring of his predecessor, Mr Wike comes closer to crystallising and embodying the conflict in the elevated and abstract sense by which it should be understood. At various fora, he talks about honour, dignity and the onerous responsibility of leaders and statesmen, implying that the governor lacked them or has broken them; but it is also evident that he himself has an incomplete understanding of the concepts he glibly but rightly enunciates.

As for Mr Fubara, he has been largely ephemeral, preferring to focus on the simple but resonating ideas of being his own man, obviously without the help of a godfather, and letting it be known that he submits to God rather than man. The governor has laboured to honour the agreement he reached in the presence of the president. He has, therefore, dithered and hemmed and hawed over an agreement he now derides as unconstitutional. His men allegedly put the parliament to the torch, while he completed the erasure by demolishing a large part of it. And still breathing terror against 27 obdurate lawmakers siding with Mr Wike, as against the three in his camp whom he bewilderingly chose to recognise and honour, he stormed the legislative quarters to warn of impending demolition, claiming that as governor he owned the property as much as he reserved the right to recognise or not recognise any lawmaker. Earlier, he had impatiently declared that lawmakers existed at his pleasure. Their existence owed their lives to his caprice, he summed up.

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If only Mr Fubara would shut up. He believes he enjoys mass following and the backing of the who-is-who in the state, and that this support sanctifies his actions and ennobles his increasingly authoritarian streak. But whatever he has said in the past few weeks, after the restraint of the past few months which he now speaks about deprecatingly, has been embarrassing and lacking in democratic foundations. He is admittedly engaged in a serious battle with the equally intransigent Mr Wike, but putting on the apparel of a dictator and preparing to burn down his state do little to burnish his fragile image or weaken the FCT minister who has had the fortune of fighting from distant peaks. It is not clear why Mr Fubara thinks the country would stand idly by and watch him demolish and undermine the constitution or democracy. Does he not sense the suspicion and repugnance of his colleague governors? Has he not learnt any lesson from some former governors who deprecated the art of governance and are today mummifying in silence and isolation?

Mr Fubara bears the larger responsibility for whatever becomes of the state. He is after all the governor, but he has become frantic and desperate, and, like the biblical Samson, appears willing to bring the whole edifice down on everybody. The people who egg him on to open and uncircumscribed revolt against the parliament in the guise of fighting Mr Wike will give him cold shoulder when he overreaches himself and the country fights back. Even if he wins, the victory will be pyrrhic. Nor does Mr Wike, who has been both unyielding and immoderate, stand a chance of erasing the governor and his supporters many of whom have obfuscated the law and rested their arguments and support on the wrong premises. The latter has a fairly better appreciation of the values being fought for; but even he has been unable to comprehend the appalling leadership failing of his successor which finds its leitmotif and resonance in his own calamitous lack of understanding of the concept of leadership. The problem is not that Mr Fubara has genuine reasons to resist the FCT minister. He does and indeed, should. The problem is that the governor has been so uninspiring in his appreciation of issues, so tactless in his approach, and so ordinary in every ramification. But this does not absolve Mr Wike of responsibility. In fact he bears the larger part of the blame for all that is happening in Rivers State.

What is playing out in Rivers is, therefore, not just two men fighting over party structure, 2027 elections, APC versus PDP, godfather versus godson, or which side of the divide cheerleaders are arrayed , or who in the state still qualifies to be described as an elder or statesman, or who will and should win in the end. What is playing out before the whole country is the depressing lack of leadership and statesmanship, a deficiency that has enabled a small and manageable misunderstanding to be multiplied exponentially into a catastrophe. How anyone can pretend to leadership without being inspired by great leaders of the past is hard to explain. That is what ails Rivers. Nay, that is what ails many Nigerian states where religious bigots and ethnic chauvinists hold sway and are eager to burn their communities; incompetent leaders who have learnt nothing from history and are doomed to repeat it. Messrs Fubara and Wike will not sheathe their swords, for neither of them can be persuaded by reason or common sense. But if any true elder is left in the state, let him rein in the calamity unfolding in Port Harcourt between the imperial politics of Mr Wike and the budding dictatorship of Mr Fubara.