Last week, the Senate constituted an 18-man committee to oversight governance in Rivers State. Since March 18, the Sole Administrator (Solad), retired Chief of Naval Staff, Ibok-Ete Ibas, has held sway in Rivers, after President Tinubu sacked Governor Siminalayi Fubara, the deputy, Ngozi Odu and members of the state Assembly in an emergency rule declaration.
The President thereafter approached the Senate and House of Representatives, in line with Section 305(2) of the 1999 Constitution, to consider whether the situation in Rivers warranted emergency rule.
The conditions under which the President may declare an emergency are listed in Section 305(3). The concern here is why it has taken the National Assembly (NASS) considerable time, knowing there is no legislature in place to interrogate the administrator. But NASS did not waste time in approving the emergency rule despite strong arguments against it.
The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), for example, described the emergency declaration in Rivers as unconstitutional, warning that it would set a dangerous precedent for Nigeria’s democracy.
In a statement signed by its president, Afam Osigwe, the lawyers’ body said: “The 1999 Constitution does not grant the President the power to remove an elected governor, deputy governor, or members of a state’s legislature under the guise of a state of emergency.
Rather, the Constitution provides clear procedures for the removal of a governor and deputy as per Section 188. Similarly, the removal of members of the House of Assembly and dissolution of parliament is governed by constitutional provisions and electoral laws, none of which appear to have been adhered to in the present circumstances.”
With that, stakeholders expected the NASS to do due diligence on the matter, to ensure that democracy and interests of Rivers people are not put at risk. However, the lawmakers were more interested in approving the emergency rule than establishing a justification for it.
The Senator representing Bayelsa West, Seriake Dickson, was reported to have raised a point of order, citing Order 135 of the Senate Rules, which stipulates that the President shall brief the Senate in a closed-door session to explain the circumstances that justified the proclamation of a state of emergency. It was reported that the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio didn’t have time for parliamentary niceties. He tackled Dickson into submission and the emergency was approved.
Perhaps, a careful and more rigorouslegislative interrogation of the emergency declaration could have assured stakeholders that it is not a ploy to take over the state through the back-door; and that justice would be served while the rule lasted.
That, perhaps could have imbued the Administrator, Ibok-Ete Ibas, with a sense of propriety and accountability, and save him from acting in ways that have embarrassed the lawmakers and even the Presidency.
The man has carried on as if he is not answerable to anybody. He has been on collision course with stakeholders, instead of being a non-partisan arbiter in the affairs of the state. His neutrality in managing the different factions in Rivers is in doubt, as he is reported to have affinity with the leader of one of the factions.
He was drafted to Rivers on the pretext to calm riotous nerves and steer the state on the path of peace and democratic rule. He hasn’t done that.
The Administrator has been reluctant to have interaction with the House Ad-Hoc Committee on Rivers State Oversight. The committee constituted by Speaker Tajudeen Abbas was inaugurated on April 15, and scheduled a meeting with the ex-Naval chief for April 17. He didn’t show up and the meeting was rescheduled for April 24. He still did not show up at the committee Room 301, where the chair, Julius Ihonvbere and others waited in vain. When he grudgingly showed up, he requested for time to prepare a brief for presentation to the Committee.The man is indeed very busy.
Ibas appointed sole administrators for the 23 Local Government Areas despite a court order barring him from exercising such powers.
Fubara, in implementing the contentious Supreme Court judgment of February 25, had sacked the officials elected on October 5, 2024, and handed the affairs to Heads of Local Governments, who were civil servants. The Supreme Court had ruled that non-elected officials can no longer manage the affairs of local government areas.
But Ibas’ emergency administration in Rivers has overruled that judgment and effectively dismantled structures put in place by suspended Governor Fubara.
He also made appointments in the Local Government Service Commission as well as the Civil Service Commission and dissolved all existing boards, parastatals and commissions. He also sacked all political appointees who worked for the suspended governor.
Some concerned Rivers stakeholders have wondered what Ibas’ mission is in Rivers, to clear the path for peace to return or to add fuel to the crisis in the state? Atedo Peterside, founder of Stanbic IBTC and ANAP Foundation, and public commentator challenged the Sole Administrator to explain how he came about the people he has appointed when he is not from Rivers, particularly when he does not have a state legislature to clear with.
The suspicion is that the administrator is taking his brief from interested parties in Abuja and the mission is not hard to decipher; to recover somebody’s purported political structure, which Fubara was on a mission to recover for Rivers people.
Perhaps the most overreaching and embarrassing of the Rivers anomaly was the orchestration that caused a walk-out by the Rivers women on the wife of theAdministrator, Mrs. Theresa Ibas, at Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu’s empowerment programme.
The women were sold the dummy that they were to be addressed by Mrs. Tinubu, but they revolted when the Administrator’s wife showed up to address them.
The women chanted they wanted Fubara’s wife to address them. Mrs. Tinubu was not present at the EUI Event Centre in GRA, Port Harcourt, but political merchants used her name to draw the crowd. The story that was pushed out was that Rivers women shunned Mrs. Tinubu, whereas, she wasn’t there physically.
To make matters worse for the Presidency, the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, amplified the defiance by Rivers women, claiming they disrespected Mrs. Tinubu and that Fubara was responsible. Wike had hoped to gain some mileage with that sycophantic fawning, but it backfired.
It turned out that the plot he engineered exposed the President’s wife to needless ridicule. Hopefully, that must have served the Presidency a taste of the abundant embarrassment their meddling in Rivers portends. That must have nudged NASS lawmakers to also wake up to administer checks and balances in the hope to avoid more embarrassment. Some stakeholders are worried that the finances of the oilrich state require close monitoring. They allege that Fubara left some money in the state coffers. It must be accounted for.
A lot could have been averted in the Rivers crises if Abuja lawmakers had shown early non-partisan concern. Despite that it has lasted for more than one year, the lawmakers did not see the need to invoke the powers they now purport to have.
Every right-thinking person knew where the trouble was engineered. Wike left no one in doubt when he confessed that despite taking appointment in Abuja, he was not going to relinquish political power in the state. He had appropriated to himself the political structures that operated in the state since 1999.
Wike’s loyalists in the Rivers State House of Assembly were encouraged to take the crisis to another level, when they defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Fubara couldn’t be convinced to be part of the charade.
After that, President Tinubu invited the two factions to Abuja, in the bid to interfere. In a signed agreement supervised by Mr. President, it was recommended among others that Fubara should recognise the defected lawmakers and accord them due support.
It turned out to be a difficult agreement to implement outside the rule of law: the Constitution is very clear on the subject of defection. Besides, things had fallen apart so terribly between Fubara and Wike. It had reached the level of fight to finish.
In the bid to survive, Fubara forced council elections to take place despite pushback by the defected lawmakers and their Abuja sponsors. A federal High Court in Abuja had barred the Independent National Electoral Commission (INCE), from releasing the voter register to the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC). RSIEC found a way round it, claiming it had an earlier order mandating the elections to hold on October 5.
Since the PDP structure in the state had been immobilised and rendered unusable, Fubara equally found his way round it, by adopting the Action Peoples Party (APP), to win 22 out of 23 chairmanship seats. If Abuja did not deploy federal might, Fubara had effectively beaten Wike to his game. But as they say, he won the fight, not the battle.
Finally, the Supreme Court judgment of February 28 had comprehensively weakened Fubara and provided a roadmap towards ending the crises. But Abuja apparently had other plans, which instigated the imposition of an emergency rule.
The task for Abuja lawmakers is to know when an oversight is ripe and timely. If they mean well for democracy, they do not have to wait for matters to degenerate and becoming embarrassing for the Presidency and for the lawmakers themselves, as it is in Rivers.
They should also have the intelligence and passion to know that troublemakers based in Abuja are the ones stoking trouble in the state legislatures. There is crisis in Benue State House of Assembly, for instance. There is crisis also in Zamfara State Assembly. The temptation is for interested parties in Abuja to leverage federal might to interfere unduly in matters that require judicial procedures to settle.
If the National Assembly must intervene, it must do so in the interest of democracy, not on behalf of selfish Abuja-based politicians who have scores to settle with their state governments. In the bid to actualise 2027, let Abuja avoid state capture at all costs. Avoid trouble!
