Dey your dey, make I dey my dey, dey your dey o, nobody worry nobody … — Fubara camp.
Obey, obey o, obey, Fubara must obey Wike, obey … — Wike camp.
Tizzy tragedy teases Rivers: sweet songs and counter-songs waxed in pidgin — all joyful intrigue that could spiral out of control, and bury the mutual antagonists.
Fubara and co want Wike to “dey your dey” (stay in your lane) — and no problems. Wike’s supporters want much more: “Fubara must obey Wike, obey” — or else!
It’s the making of the wild, wild breed of Rivers, when responsible (wo)men dig it, hot and sharp, to irresponsible music, which could clearly undo them all!
Yet, it couldn’t have been otherwise — with Wike yoked to Karma and Fubara hugging perfidy and ingratitude, twin spiritual combos that knock the wind out of their captives.
There’s pretty little Ezenwo Nyesom Wike could do with own trials in Karma’s dock. Whatever Siminilayi Fubara, sitting Rivers governor, threatens to do with him, Wike himself did — much more? — to his predecessors.
Talking down? Fubara appears unhinged with his latest rabid anti-Wike blusters. Yet, he is still a far cry from how Wike gored Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, Wike’s immediate predecessor and benefactor.
Weaponizing judicial probes? Fubara just announced, with glee, he would probe the Wike government, waving the red flag of tantalizing sleaze. But it was the same order same Fubara served as accountant-general, wasn’t it?
Why? This very same Wike blocked EFCC from this same Fubara, over some alleged regime graft! How such a probe — if there’s anything to it — won’t amount to a spectacular own goal by Fubara beggars belief.
Still, Wike himself had thundered and dragged Amaechi in the mud over a certain Rivers aircraft: bought by Peter Odili; allegedly vanished under Amaechi.
Why, for daring to ogle a counter-Wike lobby, Governor Wike decreed that dummy Governor, Celestine Omehia, refund all his post-office perks!
It was probably the right thing to do under the law. Omehia, rogue beneficiary of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s imperial impunity — remember: Amaechi’s candidacy “don get k-leg”? — was never governor in the eye of the law. But when has the law ever stopped members of Nigerian elite politics from protecting their own?
By the way, Wike just committed virtual sacrilege by gutting Peter Odili — grand Rivers political godfather — and his jurist wife, because Odili switched his support to Fubara.
That was crass ingratitude. Wike had publicly, at a church thanksgiving, lauded the role that couple reportedly played to rescue his first term as governor in 2015.
Both the tribunal and the Court of Appeal had left his win for dead. But the apex court — in which Justice Odili sat — gifted him miraculous life. Without the Odilis, therefore, would there have been a Governor Wike?
Well, Wike’s hard tussle with Karma is well and truly settled. That cup won’t pass over him, with an incensed Fubara huffing and puffing, roaring and growling, flaming and searing! If Wike can rubbish Odili, why can’t Fubara too rubbish Wike? Karma!
But does that mark Fubara’s triumph? Hardly!
True, if indeed Wike is the bully that Fubara is making him out to be, then Fubara is flush with victory! Why? Because, say control theorists, you triumph over the bully (over power) by defying him (it) — even if you died doing it.
But Fubara craves to defy and live, not defy to die. He wants to slay the godfather, and live to preen about it. That is the snag, though. The more Fubara gallops in victory, the more he seems cantering very close to own political grave.
Whereas his allegations against Wike are at best partisan vilifications awaiting proof, Governor Fubara’s high political crimes are very stark: demolishing the Rivers Parliament building to shut out law-making; and spending public money without due appropriation — with the sinister motive of one easily flowing into the other.
Then, Fubara’s penchant for “simple minority” — the inglorious parliamentary invention of Obasanjo’s imperial presidency.
First, he put his commissioners through a four-man legislative assembly — an illegal act voided (and corrected) by the Abuja Rivers presidential accord. After trashing that accord, he put his new attorney-general through an even smaller three-man assembly!
Pray, even if the governor is playing desperate politics, which SAN worth his silk would embrace screening by that glaring “simple minority”; and kid himself, a veritable man of law, that he had scaled a key constitutional requirement to arrive office, as — wait for the irony — commissioner for Justice!
Then, Fubara’s dire body language, nosing for “structural defects” to pull down the new legislative quarters, opened just an odd year ago! The lawmakers now operate from there, even if they too have turned that building into a lair of rabid opposition, from the even and balanced legislation that the Rivers voters expect of them.
Still, make no mistake: the moment the lawmakers decide to cage Governor Fubara, that very day he would be history — and no din of politics will save him. The No. 1 crime in a democracy is cancelling the legislature, its most visible soul and essence.
In swallowing the many Wike baits, Fubara is blundering into avoidable traps, by his own reckless actions. Indeed, the governor, from his most recent howls and growls, seems approaching a nervous breakdown. He probably needs an urgent shrink.
If Governor Fubara escapes impeachment, he would still have to account for wilful destruction of vital public assets on the emotional spur of the moment — if not now, then in the future when his own Karma would be waiting and ready.
Still, that’s not to say the Wike camp, savagely baiting the governor, are sitting pretty. Their own self-trap is clearly taking their PDP mandate to APC, where they claim to have defected. They would spend quite a time trying to spin that self-destruct move.
On the balance, the dire truth is that both sides are heading into a dire bind.
The “structure” that Wike has thrown in everything to preserve appears smashed for now — if not forever.
The more Wike tries to play the hard ball, unfazed by the present crisis, the clearer it is that he’s far more weakened than he was on 29 May 2023, when he handed over power.
The governorship that Fubara is pulling all stops to protect is badly battered. The governor’s cabinet is hit, for the umpteenth time, by a gale of resignations — the obvious exit of Wike loyalists.
Okay, the governor is desperate to save his gubernatorial hut. Yet, he’ll think little of lobbing tinder at its thatch, though it’s harmattan — if only to make a point!
By blundering into a reckless path of no return, both sides bait a state of emergency.
That’s a recipe for mutual ruin. But both sides can still do compromise politics: cut their losses, lick their wounds and await the next battle — perhaps at the next election?
But will they? The omens are bad. The wild, wild breed of Rivers are on the prowl!
