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Tag: Sim Fubara

  • Ex-Niger Delta agitator urges Tinubu to intervene in rivers political crisis

    Ex-Niger Delta agitator urges Tinubu to intervene in rivers political crisis

    Former Niger Delta freedom fighter, General Endurance Amagbein, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to intervene in the ongoing political dispute between Rivers State Governor, Sim Fubara, and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, to restore peace and unity.

    In a statement issued in Abuja, Amagbein warned that the crisis could escalate if urgent steps are not taken, stressing the need for timely political reconciliation to prevent further instability.

    He said the Rivers political situation has reached a stage where only President Tinubu can broker an amicable resolution that would allow the parties to reconcile and work together ahead of the 2027 elections.

    Amagbein, popularly known as “Adaka Boro the Second,” also appealed to Governor Fubara and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to set aside their differences and adopt a reconciliatory approach in resolving the crisis.

    He argued that the rift is being exploited by individuals pursuing personal interests, diverting public attention and resources away from governance and development in Rivers State.

    According to him, resolving the impasse would help refocus attention on critical sectors of the state and curb actions that may undermine public interest.

    “Wike and Fubara should join forces to promote President Tinubu’s 2027 agenda, and not to allow crisis-mongers to destabilize Rivers State.”

    “Some of these crisis mongers are not from Rivers State, but they have infiltrated the system and positioned their agents in the politics sector of Rivers State, whom they are using to add fuel to the fire.”

    “It’s about time critical stakeholders stepped in to preach peace to all the parties involved in this war.”

    “I also want to call on King Asari Dokubo and King Ateke Tom to be vigilant and study the situation keenly and not allow anybody from another state to destabilize their domains,” he said.

    Read Also: Tinubu condoles with  grieving  Ndidi on father’s death

    Amagbein also cautioned Ijaw youths against taking sides with either Wike or Fubara, as their differences can be resolved, but rather support the interest of Rivers State for the overall good of the people.

    He said supporting one side of the divide against the other will not result in any good because the impasse is a mere misunderstanding between a father and his son.

    According to him, “Some persons are planning to use this crisis as an avenue to frustrate Tinubu’s chances of winning the 2027 presidential elections in Rivers State, and so Wike and Fubara should reconcile and come to terms to put the enemies of the Tinubu Government to shame.”

    Amagbein said for some people, the only way they benefit from any government is through crisis, and that is very common in Rivers State.

    He said the crisis has lingered because of people who don’t mean well for both Wike and Fubara, who are close to them, giving them evil counsel, rather than preaching peace.

    He also urged the Rivers State House of Assembly to give peace a chance for the overall good of the citizens.

  • It’s all noise

    It’s all noise

    So, they say the president could declare a state of emergency but leave the house members and the governor intact. What does that mean? It means rolling tanks and stamping jackboots on the streets of Port Harcourt. But the house members could go ahead and impeach Governor Sim Fubara?

    But wait! These are the same people that say the house members should not impeach him, and that it would be an act of bad faith and a call to turmoil. What turmoil? Blowing up pipelines and blowing up houses, putting lives of political enemies and innocent civilians in peril. So, the president should send Nuhu Ribadu and his team to look out for those who want to turn the state over to the devil. Meanwhile, those in office still retain the resources and capacity for turbulence?

    It is quite unfortunate that it is reason that is upside down. The state of emergency is to stave off violence, but what if the violence will remain a clear and present omen so long as those who would foment are in their ferment because they have the power and pocket?

    Those who say this and call for constitutionalism were the same persons who prodded Fubara against the law. Against the same constitution, he set up a four-man legislature. They were the same television lawyers and commentators who kept mum when he blew up a legislative monument by way of the House of Assembly building. He also, against the constitution, passed a budget with four men. Also, against the constitution, he defied court order and organized a local government election.

    The same persons, against the constitution, are saying the Supreme Court erred by maintaining that Fubara defied the constitution. If the top court ruled otherwise, then he  would have acted like Obasanjo when he asked a dawn cabal of about six men to impeach a governor. It was the same PDP that did it and hailed it at that time. Obi said nothing then. Atiku was in PDP then. They did not stand up to their guy.

    They also, with intellectual mischief, refer to the Jonathan era when he slammed emergency on three states, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. For those with truncated sense of the past, Jonathan was set to dismantle the democratic structure. This essayist joined the voices to restrain him. Why? The problem was not the political structure. The governors, including now Vice President Kashim Shettima, were not the fulcrum of the crisis. It was Boko Haram. In fact, Boko Haram menaced the political structure having mowed down and planted flags in local governments in most of the states. The state of emergency was needed to protect the political structures.

    Read Also: Leakage on PPMC pipeline causes explosion in Rivers – YEAC-Nigeria

    In the Rivers State case, the threat was the political structure. The players, in both arms, were at loggerheads, and the victim was the common Riverian. The democratic structure was going to overthrow democracy in the state. So, what is the value when it precipitates anarchy?

    The governor and the lawmakers were, in the words of Shakespeare, “both in either’s powers.”

    We are a nation that denies history, even as recent as a month ago, especially if amnesia bestows profit.

    We were witnesses when President Bola Tinubu called the warring parties, Nyesom Wike and Fuabra together with the state elders, and they signed a truce. And, on good authority, I report that the president had spoken to them individually and together many times. But they saw the truce as a piece of paper, a peace on paper and pissed on it. Each side did go rogue when they were not playing to the gallery. Sometimes, going rogue meant playing to the gallery.

    After the Supreme Court verdict, elders, including PANDEF, started looking for ways to avert impeachment. It is naïve to expect that the lawmakers would not want to impeach Fubara. Fubara was acting like a born-again respecter of law when he visited the House to submit his budget. He was stooping to conquer and the lawmakers knew it, so they did not take the bait. If they did, they would have legitimized Fubara. And the same fellows who hailed him for breaking the law would now hail him for obeying it.

    But his obedience was going to be a sacrifice. He would have enmeshed the lawmakers into his scheme, get his allocation, organize his local government elections, take over the state levers of power, cruise into 2027 with victory, and replace the 27 lawmakers with his own, and he would become all in all.

    Wike and his men knew this. At that stage, it was a question of power. Those who expected both sides would tamp down their vitriol and work together did not understand the interstices of power. For them to work together would require what Chinua Achebe describes as “niceties and delicate refinements that belonged elsewhere.” In the same novel, A Man of The People, Achebe posed: “What is modesty but inverted pride.” These guys had no modesty, but they fought for the jugular.

    There was no prospect other than a standoff and a standstill. If they were statesmen, we could expect both sides to wear off their malice and act as civilized men. But mutual suspicion brewed. If one man acted gentle, he would be the other’s fool. Hence, it was a zero-sum game. Novelist Bassie Head called it, “a question of power.” Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan at a time England was a land of turmoil and standoffs. He proclaimed that “man is, by nature, selfish.” He knew that 17th century England did not abide the niceties and delicate refinement, but butchery.

    The first state of emergency in this country, in 1962, is sometimes invoked. The Awolowo part of the Action Group and the Akintola renegades precipitated semblance of a stalemate, not a true stalemate. They wanted Akintola out. They had the numbers. Those who lionize the Awo group over that fraught era do so because Akintola was a traitor to the political society of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the AG that gave birth to him. For him to continue was seen as asinine, and Akintola’s decency gave way to Machiavellian hubris. AG men enacted what  is called real politik.

    Akintola could have finagled his way into power again and prevented Adegbenro from replacing him. He would rig his way in later. Tafawa Balewa, who had grudges against the Western Region and Awo over many issues, including its model governance, prosperity and the support of the Middle Belt Congress and the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State project, exploited an apparent turmoil to declare a state of emergency. Akintola was voted out with 66 votes out of 117. Akintola’s men would not relent, and were therefore planted by the centre. That state of emergency was an act of Akintola violence to nullify a democratic vote. The Privy Council in London endorsed his ouster. Was emergency a forgone conclusion? No. It was political machismo and machination.

    What the Rivers State players on both sides provided was what historians often restrain themselves from saying: inevitability. Those who say it was hasty, or excessive have not provided any alternative? By definition, in a state of emergency, nothing is sacrosanct. That is why it is so called. Democracies have been known, since the time of Greece, to foment autocracies. We are even witnessing it today. Russia votes a tyrant every election cycle. In the United States, the people voted a convicted felon. Democrats installed a plutocracy. What Rivers State gave is what is called kakistocracy.

    Section 305 reflects what philosophers refer to as hermeneutics, or reader-response theory. Everyone reads it from their own interest. The activist who must oppose government and the opposition will read it the way it likes. Remember they did the same to justify Fubara’s errors. They say, the section does not give the president powers to suspend the elected officers. It does not deny him the powers either. Soyinka responded a little hastily when he said it was “excessive” but he was still going to “go deeper and find out what was going on in Rivers State that led to what I consider an unfortunate step in our federalist journey.” No law covers every scenario. Hence, we have judges. The drafters often presume the good faith of its executors. That good faith was what President Tinubu exercised.

    If a Bokassa was a governor and became an unchecked butcher, or if we had a person like Caligula or Nero as governor, and the people could not stop him, or if a governor starts a secessionist drive as we saw in the 19th century United States, shall we say the structure should remain? Shall we continue with the law so that sin may prevail? God forbid. The law was made for man. Lincoln knew this, hence, in a democracy, he suspended the habeas corpus, and he was supported by Congress. Many called him a despot then. But he needed to save the union first. Democracy must obey necessity.

    Fubara told the youths that at the appropriate time, they would get instruction. A day after the lawmakers sent a misconduct note to Fubara, a pipeline hugged the skies with flames. As we say, a witch cried last night, and a child died this morning. Who does not know the connection? As my father Moses used to tell his children, quoting the scriptures, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.” What happened was a warning this essayist has sounded in the past. It required no prophet, but just commonsense. But like Okonkwo of Things fall Apart and Sophocles’ Oedipus, the players saw the end but yielded to death wish.

  • Sim Fubara’s political mind games

    Sim Fubara’s political mind games

    According to Oxford Languages, a mind game is “a course of manipulative behaviour intended to discomfit another person or gain advantage over them.” Julia Wilde of D News in a 2016 presentation titled “The Mind Games Politicians Use To Win Our Votes” notes: “From the way they look, the way they sound, to the words they choose, politicians and their staff carefully craft their speeches and appearance to invoke emotion in their constituents.” Roy Eidelson also deals with this tendency in his 2018 book titled Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible.

    In Nigeria, the first civilian Governor of Osun State, Alhaji Isiaka Adetunji Adeleke, played mind games, during the governorship campaigns in 1992, through, among other means, his awesome long convoys of glittering cars. In fact, he was nicknamed “Serubawon” (‘Cast fear in their hearts’), through his intimidatingly affluent campaign roadshows. Eventually, he defeated even more established politicians in his party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Mind games continue to have concrete relevance in contemporary Nigerian politics, and the incumbent Governor of Rivers State, Sir Siminalayi Fubara of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), is increasingly proving to be adept at playing them.

    Like gubernatorial candidate Isiaka Adeleke in the 1990s, Fubara has emerged as a fearsome political spectacle in today’s Rivers State. But Fubara did not establish his intimidating political credentials through the display of affluence. Rather, in the language of Roy Eidelson, Fubara demonstrated, unmistakably, “what’s possible”. And his political opponents have been justifiably apprehensive. As the saying goes, if you’ve been stung by a bee before, every insect you see thereafter becomes a stinger in your imagination. In their passionate response to Fubara’s visit to the state’s legislative quarters on 9 May, 2024, it appeared as if the anti-Fubara lawmakers did not want to take anything for granted.

    Read Also; Governance began only three months ago due to Rivers crisis – Fubara

    But, were the legislators justified? Yes, they were. A feud developed between Fubara and his political mentor and predecessor, Barrister Nyesom Wike  (also of the PDP), who was in fact the political enabler of Fubara’s ascendancy to the position of Governor. The rift was due to what appears to be the over-bearing influence of Wike on the Fubara governorship. With Wike controlling an overwhelming majority of the members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, and with increasing belligerence on both sides, Fubara feared that he could be impeached by the legislators. As a seemingly preemptive measure to prevent the lawmakers from carrying through any impeachment proceedings, Fubara ordered the demolition of the legislative chambers. This counterpoise demonstrated how far he could go in his feud with Wike, who is his erstwhile benefactor, and with Wike’s supporters.

    Meanwhile, there was widespread exchange of pugnacious language between the two sides. Wike’s grouse with Fubara was that the latter was an ingrate who was repaying good with evil, considering the former’s nomination of and immeasurable support for Fubara’s campaigns, which earned him victory at the governorship polls.  In a 24 November, 2023 press engagement, Wike declared: “I don’t like ingrates.” Fubara had ample opportunity to shoot back on 6 May, 2024 when he received a delegation of elders from Bayelsa State: “There’s nothing wrong in one helping anyone, but nobody takes the place of God in any situation, and so long as I’m concerned, God is God. God can even bring your enemy to open a door for you. … But that is not enough for me to worship a human being.” Fubara further said: “the young people … who claim that they are Assembly members, are not assembly members. They’re not existing. … Their existence [depends on] me allowing them to exist. If I derecognise them, they’re nowhere.” 

    Like a ding dong, Wike responded on 12 May, 2024:  “I have never told anybody to worship me. Nobody can worship man … but as politicians we appreciate those who have helped us.” Wike also assured one of the 27 anti-Fubara lawmakers: “Nobody will remove you as an Assembly member.” This assurance probably became necessary because on the floor of the House of Assembly on 11 December, 2024, the 27 pro-Wike legislators announced their defection from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Legal opinions differ as to whether, by that action, they had not lost their seats as Assembly members. In response to calls from both within and outside Rivers State, the President had attempted to broker peace between the feuding parts, based not on legal niceties, but on political expediency. 

    Meanwhile, Fubara doubled down on his mind games by paying an ominous visit to the Rivers State legislative quarters on 9 May, 2024. This visit was ominous in a number of ways. First, the pre-chambers-demolition visit of 30 October, 2023 followed the belief that the legislators were planning to impeach the Governor, just as it was being rumoured before the 9 May, 2024 visit that moves were on to impeach him. Second, the Governor was reported to have said as follows about the visit to the legislative quarters: “It’s my property. I came to see it. Is the assembly not part of my property? Is there anything wrong in checking out how things are going on there? You’re aware of the development. We have a new Speaker. And I went there to see for myself how things are, because there might be a few things I might want to do for the good of our people.” It is to be recalled that the demolition of the assembly chambers was also presumed to be due to the compromised integrity of the building, seemingly for “the good” of the legislators and “our people”.

    Third, on the 9 May, 2024 visit, he was dressed in a polo shirt on a pair of trousers and topped with a flat cap complemented with a soft, self-assured swagger. This dressing reenacted cynically the sartorial pointer to the possibility of demolishing the legislative quarters. In other words, Fubara’s attire was like the executioner’s suit to the legislators. Once bitten, twice shy. So, the legislators were wondering whether history was about to repeat itself. They expressed their apprehensions very passionately, even if sometimes ridiculously.

    According to the exasperated factional Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, Martins Amaewhule, “Rivers people were stunned this afternoon when they got the information that the Governor of Rivers State Sir Siminalayi Fubara stormed the Rivers State House of Assembly quarters in yet another attempt to demolish the Rivers State House of Assembly quarters just the way he demolished the Rivers State House of Assembly complex. … The Governor has shown that he’s a violent man. … We call on the President of the Federal Republic, we call on the International Community, the British High Commission, the U.S. Embassy, all known democracies in the world, to intervene … and call him to order.”   

    In continuation of his mind games, on 10 May, 2024, it was widely reported that Fubara had signed Executive Order 001 – 2023 relocating the sitting of the state’s House of Assembly to the Government House. The Punch newspaper of that day tellingly headlined the news as, “Rivers  crisis: Anxieties as Fubara’s men release 2023 executive order moving legislators’ sittings to Govt House.” The newspaper also quoted the Executive Order as follows: “Now, therefore, I, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, the Governor of Rivers State, this 30th Day of October 2023, under the powers vested in me under the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, hereby issue, order and direct that all proceedings and business of the Rivers State House of Assembly shall temporarily take place at the auditorium, Admin Block, Government House, Port Harcourt, until the repairs, renovation and reconstruction of the chambers of Rivers State House of Assembly.”

    Just as Fubara’s mind games with respect to the visit to the legislators’ quarters and his Executive Order were beginning to lose some steam, Fubara shot back to headline dominance by saying on 13 May, 2024, at the swearing-in of the new Attorney-General for Rivers State, “As it is today, in the local parlance, they say that the jungle has matured. We will be setting [up] a panel of enquiry to investigate the affair of governance.”  Moreover, at the same event, seemingly responding to the assurance which Wike had given to the lawmaker mentioned above that his position in the House of Assembly was secure, Fubara remarked on 13 May, 2024: “Maybe where they are, they are telling them that nothing will happen. It’s happening here live. We have our own legislators that are performing their duty according to the Constitution.”

    Though he did not specify the years or administrations to be covered, his statement has generated the following, among other headlines: “Fubara to probe Wike’s administration” (The Cable); “Fubara vows to probe Wike’s administration”; and “Why I will probe Wike’s administration – Governor Fubara” (TVC News). These show Fubara’s effective use of innuendo.

    Wike may be older than Fubara, and may be more versed in the act of governance. But Fubara has managed to establish verbal equality with him; that is, if he has actually not already surpassed Wike with the ominousness of Fubara’s words. To Rivers State House of Assembly members in particular, the fear of Fubara is increasingly appearing to be the beginning of wisdom. He doesn’t seem to have time for base theatrics and doesn’t contest for a singing position; rather, he is proving to be a quintessential Nigerian political mind games player.

    Fubara is also helping to consolidate a stereotype. On 7 May, 2024, Babajide Kolade-Otitoju said as follows regarding Fubara on the TVC News programme ‘Journalists’ Hangout’: “a lot of people who don’t talk, they are more dangerous than people who talk all the time. This is what we’re seeing.” This seems to be echoing Wike’s perception of Fubara. This perception is metaphorically represented in a Yoruba proverb as “Denge tutu lehin o gbona ninu” (‘Pottage is cold on the surface but hot beneath.’) Those who don’t recognise this fact easily get their tongues and throats scalded. Fubara is, in other words, the kind of person labeled as “Eniyan jeje, ab’iwa kunkun” (‘A gentle person, with a tough character.’)

    In the past one and half to two weeks, Fubara has thrown River State into emotional over-drive and has made himself a topical issue. In fact, writing about him today in this column, shows how successful his political mind games have been. Meanwhile, the resolution of the Rivers State political crisis is in the hands of the judiciary. It is hoped that the different cases in court would be given accelerated hearing in the interest of the nation.