Four issues are burning in my heart this day. The first is the Sword of Damocles dangling over Siminalayi Fubara’s head despite Chamberlainist appeasement to placate the gods in his domain and placing the fetish of sacrifice in the shrines. But the chief priest is unimpressed. He is determined to conquer territory and has sworn to invoke lightning and thunder— lightning to bare its blinding flash and thunder to roar and strike with its fiendish devastating blows. It is now only a matter of time. His incantations have been loud and undisguised.

Ayodele Fayose, former governor of Ekiti State, has said that only prayers can save Fubara. He should know, speaking from experience. In his case, when the lightning first gave hint, just in split seconds before the accompanying rumbling blows of thunder struck, he had dashed under the bed. The thunder arrestor prevented a fatality; he was crippled in a little degree and was healed. He regained strength through the unceasing supplications by his reputed prayer-warrior wife. He came back to regain the throne. In the case of Fubara, in the earlier brush with thunder, the thunder arrestor worked well. Even then he was bruised and after six months he returned to the saddle. The thundery weather is, however, unrelenting. The thunder-cloud is gathering fast and dark. It is more ominous now than ever.

The city fathers described as the elders of the embattled state have collectively waded in fearing that the thunder storms this time would sweep the state clean; the morning-after debris of the devastation no one can predict. Dr. Peter Odilli spoke forcefully so that no one would accuse him in future of keeping silent in the event the rot in which the state is enmeshed takes a life of its own and hits everyone hard in the face— to put the gathering storm mildly.

Mr. Nyesom Wike conducts himself as if he is not subject to any authority and control. It is not as if there was an out-of-season election in the offing, he was in the state on election campaign, ostensibly for Bola Tinubu to return to office next year, 2027. INEC is not known to have blown the whistle for hustings to begin, and no one has called him to order. My reading of it is that he went to Rivers State to reassert himself as the lord of the manor to whom the governor must pay homage and whose clearance and not loving guidance must be awaited. It is Ambode all over again!

Fubara himself was and still is staid; he was lily-livered at the beginning. When he later sought to assert himself, it was too late. Even when the storms began to rage, his pre-occupation was to appease his traducers in order to keep his office instead of standing up on principles like a man. Who was Wike’s own god-father when he was in the saddle? Fubara had placed himself in the hands of a calculating and ruthless supposed benefactor. Now the thunderstorms he dodged when he had all the goodwill of this world to stand firm are back.

What then was the purpose of the emergency, what did it archive if the same charges drawn up against him and the attendant fears of chaos and confusion which necessitated the drastic measure are what have been dredged up today to raise their ugly heads? While many saw the situation as combustible waiting only for a cigarette end to set off a conflagration of unimaginable proportion and therefore saw the declaration of the emergency rule as called for to avert the explosion, and hailed it as timely, some others who were discerning saw through it all. Will the President send back Vice-Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd) as sole administrator since the conclusion seems to be that no lessons have been learnt? Strangely, the voice of APC to which the governor and the legislators all lay claim has been feeble.

All men of common sense should prevail on the legislators to change their attitude. Fubara has less than two years to go. When the time comes, the voters will overcome their cognitive impairment and use their votes to reaffirm Fubara or send him away. That is the remedy to his presumed transgressions. It is the way to avert the threatening explosion in the incendiary oil-soaked state and return to peace.