The grim dramatics of Rivers State echoes Anezi Okoro’s One Week, One Trouble (published 1972), a popular child novel in the curriculum of yore.
But whereas adventure is adorable fare in children’s literature to tickle child-readers and rouse their imagination, this Rivers’ endless cast is driven by delinquent adults.
The Rivers local government election of October 6 — the willy-nilly push to hold it at all cost; the never-ever binge to abort it with equal venom — filled that desperation bill.
It’s the latest ugly grab for the soul of Rivers. Between the often excitable Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the belligerent former Governor Nyesom Wike, now FCT minister, who paved Fubara’s path to power, it’s morning yet on brawling day!
Since Fubara’s take-over of the Rivers reins on 29 May 2023, the drama has been long and drawn, wide and winding, jerky and bumpy, making it near-impossible to impose a particular act or scene on the latest showdown.
The imperious Wike, only on August 31, ousted the infantile Fubara from the Rivers PDP structure. The Wike caucus did a state congress that filled party elective offices, with the PDP state governor nowhere in sight. But Fubara just hit back, scooping the local councils’ sweepstakes, though in partisan camouflage!
Walter Oyatogun (God bless his soul!), that colourful sports broadcaster of yore, would have hollered in the heat of the moment: “It’s a one-one goalless draw!”
But that “draw” has come with satanic dramas. First, glorious and fashionable anti-party activities.
Even if it had any precedence, this would be very rare indeed: Governor Fubara setting his mind on a local government election, yet zeroing the PDP — the party that romped him to power — out of it!
In a preening piece of self-damnation, His Excellency declared with glee: “I’m the greatest loser. My party is not participating!” But as the Supreme Court had ruled, the council poll must be done. What humbug!
Still, “greatest loser” may yet become, for Fubara, a dire, self-fulfilling prophesy! For now, however, for the governor and confederates, the Action People’s Party (APP) is the new council election messiah — and why not?
If the Labour Party (LP) could make a sweet national mash of opportunistic election-season hire, APP may yet make Rivers’ council polls own election gravy!
But before you rush to nail Governor Fubara for his “party-cide”, remember that the national PDP backed the governor and his gambit all of the way — the same schizophrenic PDP that okayed Wike’s formal re-seizure of Rivers local PDP structure!
It was the same “party-cide” that made the Wike-controlled Rivers PDP to “boycott” the poll; and goad Fubara to stall it, to obey the Federal High Court, Abuja.
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Rivers APC — hands of Esau, voice of Jacob? — had obtained the election-stay order. Rivers PDP had pounced on it to boycott the polls and bludgeon Fubara into a retreat.
Weaponizing court judgments was another sickly drama that played out before the controversial poll.
Still, street-wise: the Rivers PDP knew that with Fubara’s adoption of APP, they were toast in the rubber-stamp poll. It’s dream legitimacy the governor craves, but the Wike faction is too smart to give.
So, either side’s insistence on “obeying the court judgment” — one, federal high court at Abuja; another, federal high court in Port Harcourt — was clear cant to game each other; than any love for the Judiciary or even basic civility.
But it’s another low for the Judiciary that errant politicians used contrasting verdicts of courts — courts at the same level — to press counter-agenda and heat up the polity.
Still, don’t be in a rush to roast the courts too. Each court would float or sink on the strength of the evidence and facts placed before it.
The Rivers APC went to court claiming the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) had not fulfilled pre-election legal requirements — mainly, a 90-day notice during which INEC would update the electoral roll and give it to RSIEC on request, as the law demands. Its lawyers argued that any poll, that didn’t fulfil these legal preconditions, was illegal, null and void.
Justice Peter Lifu, of the federal high court, Abuja, found for the party and granted its prayers. To further compel its order, it told INEC not to release any register to RSIEC; and the Police and DSS not to be part of the poll. Both Rivers APC and PDP weaponized this verdict as they ramped up the pressure against Fubara.
But the Rivers APP — again, as PDP proxy? — went before Jusctice IPC Igwe of the federal high court, Port Harcourt, telling it to compel RSIEC to conduct council polls on October 5, based on the constitutional charter for elected local governments.
Both might just be right, though they gave conflicting verdicts. Yes, local government elections are constitutionally guaranteed. Even at that, laid down processes must be followed, if the poll is not to risk being declared null and void.
So, a more due process-driven and judiciary-loving combatants need not have resorted to pre-election clatter, thunder and banger in a bid to out-cower one another. They could have patiently awaited the poll; and quietly gone to court to void it, if it contravened any legal provisions.
Sadly that’s not the pull-and-shove, kick-and-slap way of Rivers politics! It’s hardly the way too of the contemporary Nigerian politician!
Still, if during the excitement anyone ever danced more naked than any other, it’s Governor Fubara himself — and this is why: his panting hysteria.
On Justice Lifu: “Even if we go by the federal high court judgment — did it say election should be banned? Did Lifu, the judge that gave that fraudulent judgment, say no to elections? Rather, he technically said don’t provide security.”
On the IGP: “I don’t know what the relationship is between the IGP and one person who claims he has so much power in the state” — no prize for guessing right who that “one person”, in Fubara’s holy rage, is! — “I don’t know the relationship because it is beginning to go beyond the normal professional relationship.”
This governor should really learn to gird his tongue! With all due respect to him, both outbursts were reckless! Didn’t his Christian Faith tell him what undid you was not what you ate but what you spewed?
Yes, the cooker-pressure bait from Wike and confederates are real. But the governor can’t afford to swallow — and flounder at — every bait his political foes throw at him!
Belting with personal insults a judge only doing his work; and trying to draw the IGP into his fray with Wike are especially dumb. Those two core institutions were forged to protect the governor’s — and citizens’ — right under the law.
It’s no good alienating either, even if they they are legally compelled to do their duties under the law. Still, blood flows in their veins as it does in the irate governor’s.
Some hot heads are already suggesting that President Bola Tinubu should seize the monthly allocation of Rivers’ local governments, on account of the disputed poll.
Perish that thought! Let the judiciary settle the dispute and point the way forward.
President Tinubu should not visit, on any governor, the evil that President Olusegun Obasanjo visited on him as Lagos governor, when he seized Lagos council funds.
