“In the circumstance, having soberly reflected on and evaluated the political situation in Rivers State and the governor and deputy governor of Rivers State having failed to make a request to me as President to issue this proclamation as required by Section 305(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, it has become inevitably compelling for me to invoke the provision of Section 305 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State with effect from today, 18th March 2025 and I so do.” –President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday, March 18, 2025.
If there is anybody I do not expect to commit constitutional infractions, it is our dear President Bola Tinubu. From 1990 or thereabout, he bestrode Nigeria’s political scene like a colossus. He was elected to the Nigerian Senate under the Babangida endless transition programme, which terminated on August 28, 1993. After Gen. Sani Abacha took over the reins of government sequel to the palace coup that led to the ouster of Chief Ernest Shonekan as head of the Interim National Government on November 17, 1993, Tinubu and likeminded democrats teamed up to form the National Democratic Coalition, better known as NADECO. They demanded immediate de-annulment of the June 12 presidential election and a return to civil rule. Tinubu had to flee abroad after Abacha’s goons were all out for the NADECO members and he only returned in 1998, after Abacha died, to participate in the birth of this Fourth Republic.
Though he started as a federal lawmaker, Bola Tinnubu was in 1999 elected as governor of Lagos and re-elected in 2003, the only Alliance for Democracy governor to survive Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party onslaught to take over the six states in South-West Nigeria. He became the last man standing among the six Alliance for Democracy governors elected in 1999. Since he left the office of governor in 2007, he has birthed many political godchildren. All his successors in Lagos State were his anointed candidates. Tinubu was so influential in South-West politics to the extent that he was said to be instrumental to the emergence of Governors Rauf Aregebesola and Gboyega Oyetola in Osun State, Governor Kayode Fayemi in Ekiti State, Governor Abiola Ajimobi in Oyo State, Governor Dapo Abiodun in Ogun State and even the immediate past Vice President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to mention a few.
Someone with that kind of democratic credential is expected to hold the Constitution in high esteem and maintain fidelity to the rule of law. It is on record that he fought for local government autonomy way back in 2002 when he engaged in a titanic legal battle against former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who seized the federal allocation meant for the 20 Lagos State Local Government Councils after his (Tinubu’s) government created additional 37 local council development areas. Tinubu won at the Supreme Court and the seized funds were eventually released by Obasanjo’s government.
Given his sound political sagacity and pedigree, I did not expect President Tinubu to commit the gaffe he did when he declared a state of emergency in Rivers State last week, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Yes, the political crisis in Rivers State indeed started in September 2023 after the Rivers State House of Assembly mooted the impeachment of Governor Siminalaye Fubara. The governor’s camp fought back by allegedly committing arson on the State Assembly, leading to the eventual demolition of the Assembly complex, thereby frustrating the impeachment move. The President indeed mediated in the political crisis in December 2023, which led to an eight-point resolution. While the governor largely fulfilled his side of the agreement by reabsorbing the nine commissioners who resigned from his cabinet and withdrew the cases filled in court, the camp of the lawmakers, under the guidance of their godfather, the Minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike, continually made things difficult for the governor.
Fubara is not blameless in the political crisis, as his failure to represent the 2024 budget as well as withholding the salaries and allowances of the 27 lawmakers of Rivers State is provocative. His conduct in the October 5, 2024, local government election and encouragement of the defection of his loyalists to participate in that election under another political party, the Action People’s Party, smacks of anti-party since he belongs to the Peoples Democratic Party. Perhaps the Rivers State political crisis would not have festered if the 27 state lawmakers who openly claimed to have defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress had been manly enough to consummate their defection by registering at their various wards. Yes, they were alleged to have sworn to affidavits at an Abuja Federal High Court, but in the eye of the law, a membership registration card is the sole proof that matters most.
In any event, the Rivers political crisis is a godfather versus godson clash and unless former Governor Wike and the incumbent Fubara are brought to the negotiation table by an impartial panel of arbitrators and mediators, the crisis will linger despite the state of emergency. Wike has consistently maintained that Fubara wanted to wrestle his political structure from him and that is the remote cause of the roforofo fight.
Not a few political pundits have referred to Fubara as a betrayal and traitor. However, it is in the nature and character of politics for the godfather to be betrayed by the godson. It happened in Anambra between Chief Chris Uba and Dr Chris Ngige; it happened in Oyo State between Chief Lamidi Adedibu and Governor Rashidi Ladoja. It is currently happening between former Governor Nasir El-Rufai and the incumbent Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Uba Sani, while not forgetting the ongoing political imbroglio between the Secretary to the Federal Government, Senator George Akume and the current Governor of Benue State, Hyacinth Alia. Former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was alleged to have backstabbed Tinubu by contesting against him for the All Progressives Congress presidential ticket in 2022.
President Tinubu goofed by blaming Fubara solely for the Rivers State political crisis and by declaring a state of emergency whereby he suspended the elected governor, deputy governor and lawmakers. Section 305 of the Constitution did not give the President such powers. The grounds for the removal of a governor have been explicitly stated in Section 188 of the Nigerian Constitution.
The President was one-sided when he failed to openly or privately reprimand or caution the FCT minister for his unguarded incendiary rhetoric on Governor Fubara and his Ijaw ethnic group. While it is true that Section 305 vested the President the power to declare a state of emergency, it is contemplated that extra measures will be deployed to maintain law and order. This is why since October 1962, when the first state of emergency was declared in the Western Region, down to 2002, when another SoE was declared in Ekiti State and Plateau in 2004, it is only the one former President Goodluck Jonathan declared in 2013 in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe that cannot be faulted, as democratic institutions were not affected.
How different is what President Tinubu did from what the Supreme Court frowned at in its February 28, 2025, judgement on Rivers State when it said, “A government cannot be said to exist without one of the three arms that make up the government of a state under the 1999 Constitution as amended.” Can a government be said to exist when two out of the three arms of government have been suspended?
Sole administratorship is unknown to democracy. Rather than hastily declaring a state of emergency, President Tinubu should have adopted the method he used to resolve the Lagos State House of Assembly leadership crisis when he sent an emissary made up of Chief Bisi Akande and Aremo Olusegun Osoba, both former governors, to mediate in the crisis. Thereafter, he invited the 40 lawmakers to his office in Abuja and had another round of dialogue with them. The President should have likewise raised a panel of impartial mediators to weigh in and resolve the political crisis in Rivers and thereafter have tête-à-tête with the FCT minister and his estranged godson, Fubara. I do hope proper mediation will happen before the expiration of the six months, as any further elongation of the SoE will be deemed an attempt at state capture ahead of the 2027 general elections.
