What started as child’s play fire in August of 2023 (just a few months after Sir Siminalayi Joseph Fubara was sworn in as governor of Rivers) snowballed into an inferno last week (when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu -just like that- declared a state of emergency in the oil-rich state on Tuesday, March 18, 2025). This may just be the prologue of the live improvisation drama in Port Harcourt but you cannot delay beyond this point the name of one of the main dramatis personae. Of course, that is His Excellency, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, honourable minister of Federal Capital Territory and immediate past governor of the state (of Rivers). To complete his citation and therefore properly understand both his role and perhaps his reason(s), it is just and pertinent to add that he almost singlehanded made Fubara governor; the latter having served as his accountant general and more.
In August 2023, some gymnastics at the House of Assembly, coupled with state executive council exodus, hinted of cracks in the wall of godfather-godson relationship. Then muffled shouting matches followed. Then the cracks stretched into chasms. Then the Presidency -well, the President- attempted a reconciliation, which only worsened things because both sides thereafter became emboldened to brazen it out.
Thenceforth, the big masquerades threw caution to the wind by not only demasking but descending into the arena in person. Verbal blows were flying all over the place, especially the media space, with accusations, claims, counter-accusations and counter-claims renting the air. Respectable elders, sounding more like schoolboys, did not hide the fact that they had taken sides; they called names and threatened fire and brimstone. Before long, a bomb or so went off at the state house of assembly complex and Gov. Sim Fubara had to pull the dome down.
As the plot thickened, all of 27 legislators (out of 32) mostly of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) suddenly crosstituted to All Progressives Congress (APC). Again, for those who do not know, APC is the president’s party while Gov. Fubara and Minister Wike (who by the way owns -yes, owns- the 27 legislators) should be PDP. This writer uses “should be” because as we speak only the honourable minister and perhaps the president know for sure the former’s political party. Things are so fluid and hazy in Rivers and between Port Harcourt and Abuja that everyone involved is considered either a criminal or suspect, or both.
This is why the live movie is so interesting. In fact, it is so captivating that even onlookers are divided down to the middle. You are either for or against. There is no middle ground.
Even the supreme court of the land, which we think ought to be peopled by human beings with white blood in their veins, caused total outrage when it stepped into the matter. The thing about the Rivers imbroglio is that you cannot touch it and remain the same in the eyes of the ever fastidious public. With the last bastion of justice failing abysmally to restore sanity, the returning Speaker Martins Chike Amaewhule and 26 others not only bounced back like wounded lions, they came back baring fangs and baying for blood. The governor, thinking he could forge peace called on telephone, sent a mail or two and went visiting the house; all three olive branch attempts ended up as exercise in futility.
Speaker Amaewhule and company, clearly acting on the say-so of Abuja (come on, you know who) completely oblivious of posterity rejected all of the governor’s entreaties, even locking the gates of the assembly against the state chief executive when he came visiting. In politicsfare, all is fair, right? After all, the lawmakers argue, Gov. Fubara withheld their emoluments all through the standoff up until the supreme court intervention. You can be sure though, if they had not been paid in full before the presidential sledgehammer fell on the state last week, that the administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-ete Ekwe Ibas, retd, shall treat them real good no matter what this week.
We move. But, how did the former chief of naval staff, a Cross Riverian, end up in charge of Rivers state in a democracy? Well, nobody saw it coming or should we say an alarming majority never thought Rivers could degenerate to this lowest low where infighting has not only stolen their pride and progress but also bought an outsider to preside over their estate. An attack or one or two on oil pipelines and allied facilities which is the bedrock of our national economic infrastructure frightened the presidency enough into pressing the panic button.
President Tinubu, himself a well-decorated veteran of political intrigues and battles, in the ad hoc nationwide address last Tuesday, left nobody in doubt where he stood. Notwithstanding, there is no denying the fact that the retired naval chief elected by the president to go to Port Harcourt and restore order in six months, cuts the picture of the man for the job and can so far be said to be on top of the situation. In addition, worthy of note is the fact that the live audience were left stupified when the national assembly (especially the lower part of the bicameral behemoth) initially gra gra-ed raising hopes of a never-before-seen legislative resistance to executive exuberance in Abuja. With the entire scene rounding off in deafening silence, President Tinubu won.
What lessons can all of us glean from the Rivers experience? This writer has packed quite some truckloads and is ready to share, here and now. One: Moses’s Egypt training does not insulate or exempt that country from his pugnacity. Just as bin’s US(?) training did not stop him from using what he learnt against the benefactor nation.
Fubara became Director of Finance and Accounts, Rivers State Government House, in 2015, the year Wike took office as governor. Are you thinking what I am thinking? Five years later, Fubara was promoted Permanent Secretary, Rivers State Government House (this month in 2020) and in December that same year was announced Accountant General, a position he only relinquished in May 2022 to become PDP governorship standardbearer and eventual successor to his boss, then-Gov. Wike, the following year. The fact that Wike literally made him did not help anything; did not leave any guarantee -which is why the erstwhile godfather must be this insane!
Lesson number two: be careful, my dear godsons, some godfathers can “senatornatasha” you to primitive depths where you thought they could never go. So, know who you mess with -many thanks, His Excellency, Ayo Fayose. Lesson number three: as we all have already been told and retold, when you live in a glass house, never throw stones and even if those without throw stones at you, neither throw them back nor heed whatever advice or fall to any temptation. When you hold the yam and the knife, you have nothing -absolutely nothing- to prove.
You have absolutely everything to lose: you risk losing both the glass house and the yam and the knife: beware. The fourth lesson from the Port Harcourt-based Rivers school of life is that even your family members and so-called staunchest supporters can threaten to kill people for your sake just to raise own value and bargaining power. With Fubara out of Government House -we hope momentarily- his supporters and phone calls shall maximally decrease while Wike’s shall insanely increase. Still, the embattled governor should be consoled because although it is difficult to see it as such right now the Tinubu seeming punitive measure is actually permanent help.
Lesson number five that we all must imbibe from the Fubara/Wike tango is how in politics sauce for the goose can never be sauce for the gander. Yesterday presidents and senior citizens who sanctioned emergency rule are today up in arms against it. Its yesterday critics and opponents are today deploying and defending the stratagem. Sssh, tomorrow cometh.
The sixth wisdom nugget tumbling out of Rivers school of life is a Chinua Achebe rehash. Family members should be smart when bickering over inheritance otherwise sharing shall be decided by an extraneous judge. Quickly, quickly, let’s switch on lesson number seven: within the Nigerian power matrix and calculus, weakness is stronger and smarter than courage. You see that governor who plays the game like a fool, kneeling where he should sit with legs crossed, smiling when he should frown?: fear him, emulate him; he cannot fall into any emergency, whatsoever.
Which brings us to lesson number eight: “agreement is agreement.” Never ever accept what you shall not concede or tolerate. In all the years that Fubara served Wike, he cannot tell us he didn’t know his temperament; especially when he feels deprived or wronged. Accepting to be governor but reneging later is tantamount to wanting to outsmart which is evil in the sight of God.
As we come now to the ninth lesson, permit a deviation just to offer many thanks to Grandma Eno Ekong, because of whom I am able to correct us. Whatever it is, always accept and maintain peace. If you don’t, because to not be seen like a fool or weakling, you shall like a loser willy nilly. Fubara and Wike are eventually going to end up on the peace table but, you know what, posterity may never remove the big, bold black-ink asterisk they both have on their otherwise illustrious careers, a function of the emergency blot on the escutcheon of their ancestry and state brought by their puerile obduracy.
The national shame that the proud people of Rivers currently endure was avoidable. One only hopes political gladiators in other states can swear, going forward, that under no circumstance would they cut off their subnational or national nose just to spite their political or ego face. And, with that, we come to the tenth and last lesson the duo of Fubara and Wike teach us, namely that power or Pyrrhic victory is but an empty dream. Both men, no matter who thinks himself victor, shall for a long time be treated with disdain, ignominy and suspicion by true Rivers people.
The way out as this writer sees it is what this space recommended last Monday. Minister Wike, being the bigger person, should make that telephone call and that public speech today if he loves Rivers, the state that has given him everything. He is the only person who can successfully lead the genuine and urgent reconciliation that Rivers and its people are in dire need of. Tomorrow is going to be too late.
God bless Rivers state of Nigeria!