IF Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State felt the peace deal he signed before the president in Abuja last Monday left him with the short end of the stick, he did not immediately betray his feelings. There were probably one or two others in his delegation who felt queasy like him. But a day later in Rivers State, when he addressed the 3rd Convocation and 6th Founders Day ceremonies of PAMO University of Medical Sciences in Iriebe Town, Obio Akpor local government area of the state, it had become obvious that he felt disadvantaged by the peace deal brokered by the president to end the simmering conflict unsettling Rivers. Plaintively, with lips quivering as he struggled to dam the tears welling up in him, he announced that no price was too high to pay to ensure peace in the state. He had had about 24 hours to reflect on the eight-point peace deal he signed, particularly items three, four and five which deal with the restoration of legislative leadership, representation of state budget, and re-absorption of 10 commissioners who had of their own volition resigned from his cabinet, and appeared chastened that he had been made to look less like the valiant warrior he had positioned himself to be in the early weeks of his battle with his mentor, FCT minister and former governor Nyesom Wike.
There is a groundswell of opposition against the deal from his state inspired by two former governors, Rufus Ada George and Peter Odili as well as notable Ijaw leaders, including Edwin Clark, a former Information minister. The opposition against the deal is hardening, particularly with sundry street protests, but it is not clear whether it will acquire enough amperage in the weeks ahead to deflate and derail the agreement. Perhaps if the governor had not been compelled to take back the commissioners and submit to the Speaker Martin Amaewhule-led Assembly leadership, the governor’s hands would have been strengthened. The ex parte injunction granted him weeks ago had given him a distorted sense of political and constitutional supremacy, from which high grounds climbing down appears onerous and humiliating. If the tempo of the disgust against the deal is maintained, the hawks may yet have the upper hand. But that advantage will be unable to endure for very long. The state has not only wobbled into a legal and constitutional cul de sac, it has sadly displayed before the whole country its inability to produce inspiring leaders with the capacity to understand complex problems and issues and find resolutions.
Some of the state’s leaders as well as analysts outside Rivers have suggested that the problem is essentially a constitutional one which the courts must be made to resolve. But there is nothing in the misunderstanding between the governor’s camp and Mr Wike’s forces that shows that the disagreement is either legal or constitutional. It may have morphed somewhat into a constitutional matter, but it began strictly and almost wholly as a political disagreement between Mr Fubara and his mentor over how the state is run. The governor is reported to have felt choked by his predecessor’s demands and insistences. So far, however, neither of the combatants has availed the public directly what the crux of the matter really is. There is a lot of waffling going on, with whispers and suspicions about money, influence and positions running riot. Interestingly, both have publicly limited themselves to the more sanguine and noble part of their disputes. Mr Wike talks about the betrayal of political structure, thereby cleverly rousing and pricking the conscience of leading politicians obsessed with such matters, while Mr Fubara talks about external meddlesomeness, indicating that his animus is directed against anyone who wants to compromise the sovereignty of the state. Both positions resonate with each man’s captive crowds.
The Abuja deal obviously took off from the point of view of politics, believing that the misunderstanding between the governor and his predecessor is essentially outside the purview of the constitution and only tangentially related to the issue of law. There is of course sense in trying to resolve such matters from the point of view of the law and the constitution, for then such conflicts stand the chance of setting precedents and curating solutions that endure. In addition, some argue, it will help Nigerian democracy to stabilise and mature. This naturally suggests that the godfather phenomenon, with which the Rivers crisis is lathered, or the grander and nobler subject of mentorship from which prism Mr Wike’s supporters like to look at the problem, is both unknown to the constitution and fraught with moral and interpretative difficulties. In the weeks ahead, as the protests in Port Harcourt are indicating, one of the two arguments will take the upper hand. The governor’s plaintive cry at the PAMO university convocation may indicate that at bottom he resents the deal, and would love to undermine it; but his statement about paying a high price for peace may also indicate that the pragmatist in him embraces the intuitive wisdom of downplaying the radicalism and threats of his young and ageing supporters. Given the complicated cut and thrust of Rivers State politics, if the presidency, which brokered the deal last Monday, is not already contemplating other political alternatives, it would be surprising. They should ponder their shrinking options.
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No commentator on the Rivers crisis has failed to blame both the governor and his predecessor for the crisis stifling the state. Mr Wike is denounced as abrasive and overbearing, and Mr Fubara is dismissed as naïve and overreaching. Until the governor exploded in uncharacteristic rage, few except those close to him knew the pressures he endured from his predecessor. His problem, however, is his limited capacity in managing a godfather apparently consumed with his own fantasies, his inability to calibrate and moderate his reactions to his mentor’s provocations. His methods had been amateurish and boyish, sometimes wearing a distant and wistful look on his face; but in regards to the latest eruptions, nearly every step he has taken has been misplaced, every statement unreal, and his rallying cries uncourageous, superficial and unconvincing. To compound these faults with excessive display of emotions is to court disaster. Not to have a mind of his own and to wrap this failing in poor judgement led to the excessive and short-sighted response of demolishing the House of Assembly building to preempt his impeachment, an impeachment that was more bluff than real.
On the surface, Mr Wike has appeared to have the upper hand in the peace deal. But in reality, he has also seemed to lose the public esteem he desperately covets. That means Mr Fubara has the opportunity to carve something extraordinary for himself, assuming he can surround himself with brilliant and farsighted advisers. Instead of crying over split milk, he should see what lemonade he can make from the lemon life has given him. He is obviously disadvantaged and shackled, and must now contend with a triumphant and skewed legislature as well as a cabinet that appears beholden to someone else. But it is in such hostile circumstances that leaders are forged. Mr Fubara seems at bottom committed to making the Abuja accord work. Let him, therefore, see how he can disarm the hostile lawmakers instead of combating them; and deploying all manner of suasions, let him also entrance his cabinet and inoculate them against division and bellicosity. He must find novel ways of resisting Mr Wike without openly engaging him in fruitless battles on hostile grounds. His side of the story, hitherto concealed, has come into the open; and while it portrays him as tactically inept, it nevertheless shows that his predecessor has been exacting. He needs to proceed warily, tactically, and must eschew the sanctimonious approach hardliners in the state are urging upon him.
By now, Mr Wike must have known that he is in a very delicate position. By taking a ministerial appointment with the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration while still retaining his membership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), he is running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, a guile every fibre in his being repudiates. The groundswell of opinion in Rivers is largely against him, especially with the governor’s hasty alliance with the Labour Party (LP), a group of highly motivated and pugnacious but unthinking partisans. If that dubious alliance is sustained, it will constitute a formidable opposition to Mr Wike and his defecting lawmakers, especially if he himself chooses to also defect. Even if the peace deal endures, there is no way the FCT minister can retain his hold on the state on the level he fantasises. He must begin to reassess his politics as scrupulously and realistically as he can muster. Mr Fubara is an impossible person to deal with, given the abysmal manner he fraternises with the ‘enemy’. Had that not been the case, it would have been advisable for the FCT minister to ensure a rapprochement with the governor and in addition ask his men to give him the fullest support in governing Rivers. But there are many around the governor who resent an Abuja potentate dictating to the state, especially when the state has a few wary ex-governors of its own, including the flip-flopping Dr Odili.
Mr Wike’s friends in the APC must now begin to quietly reassess their politics, particularly the part that involves Rivers State in their electoral calculations. They need a buffer elsewhere, a plan B no less. Nothing guarantees that they will henceforth always get Rivers into the APC column. In fact, given the current mood in the state, and the unwise and hasty defections and resignations, Rivers is an electoral toss-up. The state is of course not also guaranteed for the PDP or LP in the years and elections ahead, seeing that both parties are likely to become engulfed in crisis sooner or later, but it can play a great spoiler in 2027. APC leaders, Senator Adams Oshiomhole revealed at a book launch in Abuja last week, enjoy internecine wars and cannot always be trusted to fight bravely and consensually. Factions of the ruling party, for various reasons, may want to exploit and harden the division in Rivers. Rivers is, therefore, in a flux; so, too, is politics 2027. The ongoing crisis in the state, which mercifully is yet to ossify, should be sensibly managed to prevent it from convulsing the nation. But there are no guarantees that both Mr Fubara and Mr Wike can manage their egos well enough not to impede their goals or ambitions. Sadly, the greater responsibility of finding a happy ending to the Rivers saga lies with the APC and Mr Wike, not the governor who is playing victimhood very elegantly and adroitly.
Strangely, too, Rivers State elders, including Mr Wike and the governor, are unable to appreciate or properly decipher the state’s regnant culture or zeitgeist. The entire state is culpable. As governor, Mr Wike waxed lyrical over the state, constituting his own troubadour, belabouring his opponents, and traducing monarchs. They suffered his harangues for years, gritting their teeth and dancing to his tunes. Once he left, the elders and stakeholders simply transferred their allegiances to the new men in the saddle, desensitised to their own lack of fidelity to and even disinterest in any political virtue. The constitution and the law never mattered. With Mr Fubara, despite his glaring flaws, his abysmal misreading of history and lack of principles and almost total ignorance of ideology, the state’s elders have seen and embraced a new champion. Their fecklessness proved lethal in the last polls, and it will define and stultify both the politics of the state in the coming years as well as distort future polls. Decades of returning fantastic polling figures may have now given way to the shocking realism of BVAS, but those years and structural and electoral changes have not reconstructed electoral behavior on a scale that gives hope for predictability and a great and enduring future. For stakeholders and elders who never cared about the constitution for years, it is shocking that they now rhapsodise its beauty and sacrosanctness.
However, Rivers State is not alone in projecting the politics of opportunism. With the exception of a few political leaders who make tokenistic appeal to ideology or any other thing that appears a little lofty, most states and politicians subscribe to nothing more than the politics of expediency. This column suggested last week and at other times in the past that Mr Wike, apart from being unideological himself, settled on Mr Fubara as his successor for the wrong reasons, chief among which was his successor’s presumed loyalty and perhaps engaging stoicism. Like other states which adopted that flawed approach to succession, Rivers cannot produce a different, idealised outcome. The Abuja deal cannot in any way promote peace for the long term. The problem is much more fundamental than defecting lawmakers and resigning commissioners. Mr Wike may have some advantage now, but he will have to adopt statesmanlike attitude far more subliminal than he is capable of to produce the outcome everyone dreams about. And Mr Fubara himself, who is believed to be incapable of his predecessor’s charismatic politics and quick wittedness, must find and surround himself with incredible beings of sound judgement and philosophy capable of creating the political environment lawyers and constitutionalists around Nigeria talk very glibly about. He has disavowed the virtue of joining his predecessor to create an ironclad system capable of withstanding outside stresses or of imbibing a defined and centralising ideology; he will face the possibility, like the intransigent Mr Wike himself, of being defeated or damaged separately. It is unfortunately difficult to be optimistic as the state cavorts in mediocrity and poor leadership all-round.
