But Fubara may just have an ace up his sleeve. Is he going to return as a timid and beleaguered chicken who will unquestioningly take everything thrown at him, no matter how demeaning, or a wounded and ferocious lion who has nothing to lose and is ready to fight till the end, no matter the cost?
Nigerian politics is a gift that keeps giving. It’s fraught with impunity and tinged with a vicious and intemperate quest for power. Many of the politicians prowling the treacherous and perilous political landscape are not out to use their position and heft to improve the lives of an average Nigerian or make the country a better place, but to fraudulently accumulate wealth they don’t need through corruption and malfeasance in public offices.
In recent years, no event or happening has captured the vicious, malevolent and tyrannical nature of Nigerian politics than the removal of Rivers State governor, Sim Fubara, from office. Recall that President Bola Tinubu removed the governor and declared a state of emergency in the oil-rich state in flagrant violation of the Nigerian constitution.
Anyone who followed the political crisis in the state, which was largely engendered by the fall out between the former state governor and FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, and Fubara after the latter moved to assert his authority and end the minister’s continued meddling in the state affairs, knows that the widely condemned emergency rule is about giving the former governor an ironclad control of the state political structure and an unfettered access to its enormous financial and material resources. It has nothing to do with the security of lives and properties in the state.
Since the proclamation and unilateral suspension of the governor, who used to be a protège and mentee of the minister before they became estranged and turned political foes, more incidents have plunged us further into a state of authoritarianism but have the names of major actors involved in the Rivers imbroglio engraved on the rock of Nigeria’s political infamy. From the unsettling refusal of the Supreme Court to hear and rule on the suit filed by governors of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenging the emergency rule to the sham of local government elections conducted in the State, the political events of the past six months have further underscored the impunity entrenched in our system.
On Monday, the presidency issued a statement expressing President Tinubu’s satisfaction and delight at the end of the emergency rule in Rivers. One can’t exactly tell if the president expected Nigerians to troop to the street with drums and guitar praising him for an aberration that should not have happened in the first place. Whether he knows it or not, the role he played in Rivers will forever be a big stain on his government which has not had it good in terms of public perceptions. Whether he knows it or not, he has set a dangerous precedent and handed the next president a loaded firearm with which to attack our fragile democracy. The message he has passed with his actions in Rivers is that the President can instigate a crisis in a state he is interested in and use the crisis as an opportunity to carry out and achieve his inordinate political objectives which are not in the interest of the people of the said state.
Since the emergency rule ended on Wednesday, many have waited with bated breath to see the next step of Fubara, who was expected to return as governor. Some have admonished him to save what is left of his dignity and not return as governor to complete his tenure as there is nothing to return to because he has effectively been stripped of the power that he should have following his suspension and he will only be a figurehead with no authority and power to deliver the mandate given to him by the people. Others have called on him to return, fight for his place and reassert his authority.
No one can guess what Fubara has in mind and what to expect from him when or if he decides to return as governor, as he did not show up at the governor’s office yesterday, as he was supposed to. But one can predict the challenges he will face in his second coming, and a glimpse of that has been shown by the state house of Assembly and Wike, whose shenanigans were instrumental to his suspension and the emergency rule in March.
On Thursday, Wike, in what appears to be part of the move to completely clip the wing of the governor and drastically whittle down his influence, demanded the return of all the old commissioners and appointees whom he foisted on the governor and who are loyal to the minister. The governor will have to do the bidding of the power brokers who temporarily kicked him out of office in March if he wants to finish his tenure without any of the crisis and imbroglio that characterised the early days of his tenure This is not a return to democratic rule, it is the continuation of the emergency rule draped in the flag of legality. Fubara does not appear to have the temerity to call the bluff of his adversaries and tormentors and act with the authority and confidence of a democratically elected governor, and he clearly does not come across as a principled and scrupulous person who will walk away from the imminent ignominy that will characterise his return.
Nevertheless, whichever path Fubara decides to tread, he will be battling with forces that are ready to plunge the state into crisis rather than let him govern freely and independently. The signs are there. The state has been captured and its people defeated. But Fubara may just have an ace up his sleeve. Is he going to return as a timid and beleaguered chicken who will unquestioningly take everything thrown at him, no matter how demeaning, or a wounded and ferocious lion who has nothing to lose and is ready to fight till the end, no matter the cost?
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