Neither Wike nor Fubara is a saint

President Bola Tinubu’s latest intervention in the political imbroglio in River State is statesmanlike.

No president of Tinubu’s political stature and sagacity would sit comfortably and watch a frontline state like Rivers go up in flames. This is not just due to the state’s economic significance but also to the potential impact a conflagration could have across the country. It is too risky, especially for a country already troubled on many fronts like Nigeria.

The economic considerations should become even more concerning for the president when some leaders of the Ijaw ethnic group are already sending signals of war. It is a frightening prospect that the country should avoid, but we shall return to the intervention of Ijaw interests shortly.

However, it is important to register that, at some point, political solutions, like the one Tinubu facilitated on Monday night, are needed to prevent the escalation of hostilities. If things go on the way they evolved, irrational actions by partisans could lead to anything, including a state of emergency. Nigeria cannot afford that at this time.

Yet, the president’s intervention is not devoid of certain absurdities. It started with media reportage of the truce. Virtually every headline suggested that President Tinubu had “directed” parties to take specific actions to resolve the mounting tension in the state. So, I wondered which part of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999 as amended) empowers the president to “direct” the Governor and legislators of a state about how to conduct state affairs? Where does the President, or the meeting he presided over, derive the authority to “direct” the restoration of the River State House of Assembly members who willingly defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Given that a court of law already endorsed the other faction comprising four members and that this faction had declared the seats of the defectors vacant. So, can the President, or anyone for that matter restore them to office by fiat?

Beyond the constitutional issues, there are questions about the practicability of some decisions taken at the meeting.

For instance, how do the ten members of the state executive council who resigned in solidarity with Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike (their benefactor), work harmoniously with Governor Siminalayi Fubara, whose confidence they have broken?
Would the 25 legislators the President “directed” to return to the House come back as members of the PDP or the All Progressive Congress (APC), to which they claimed to have defected? However, we do not have evidence that the legislators went through the complete constitutional process for political defection, in which case they may not have defected.

If they return as members of the APC, how does a PDP governor function effectively with a legislature predominantly populated by people who tried to impeach him while they were in the same party, but now in a different party? Did Tinubu advise them to return to the PDP or is there a grand plan for everyone, including the governor to move to the APC?

It is a totally confounding situation because, with resolutions from that meeting, Fubara will end up working with two crucial but hostile groups. That is a state executive council and a legislature who walked out on him in favour of the man demanding his political life at the most important time. In essence, the President’s intervention may if it has any effect at all, complicate rather than improve things.

But all of this reflects the state of politics and the failure of political processes in Nigeria. For the Governor of a state and respected politicians like former Governor Peter Odili march to the Presidential Villa in search of a solution to the altercation between Wike and Fubara is disgraceful and a desecration of the ideals of party politics. It reflects the mercantile disposition of Nigerian politicians and the weakening of the political parties.

If these political parties had ideologies, they would be disciplined, such that members do not have to look up to the President for the resolution of conflicts at municipal, sub-national, and even national levels. Even if the President, who has the more urgent responsibility of fixing the country is a member of that party, not speak of a situation in which PDP walked talked tail between legs to seek solutions for an APC member.

For the records, conflicts between Wike and Fubara are not unusual in politics and even in life. Political parties should be able to deal with and reconcile all the centripetal and centrifugal forces around them. A political party is meant to cement society, bringing together all tendencies and uniting them through its ideology. Every political party should have a layer of structures, including an established process for conflict resolution such that contending forces do not bog the courts down with trivial party issues, as we see in Nigeria.
Unfortunately, money, the essential corollary to power in Nigeria, is the only ideology guiding politicians and their parties.

So, party leadership and structure fall at the feet of the one who holds power. They become subservient and sacrifice the interests of the party and society at the altar of personal satisfaction. As a result, rather than speak to power and hold on to principles that edify humanity, politicians become partisan, take sides, to the decimation and ridicule of the party that brings them together. This is how the PDP sold its birthright to the extent that it had no significant representation at the meeting hosted by Tinubu on Monday night!

The prebendal nature of Nigeria allows one man to be so powerful as to singularly decide who occupies every office in a state and purchase expression of interest forms for them all without challenge. Of course, he will expect them to dance to his every tune without any chance of counselling, not to speak of contradicting him. Nigerian leaders forget their mortality, they forget that power is transient and carry on like it will never end.

The god complex of powerful politicians goes beyond their political allies. They disregard otherwise respected institutions with persuasive moral authority. Speak about the inability of traditional, community and religious to intervene until matters get out of hand and politicians drag the entire society into the mud of their wars. Things have so broken down that politics and political office are the most attractive ventures in Nigeria, and most people with moral authority now cower before politicians.

It is also why people, communities, and ethnic groups are so self-obsessed that they see nothing but the primordial in all conflicts. Arguments are either religious, ethnic, or zonal, there is nothing like a national consensus about what is good or bad in Nigeria.

For example, Ijaw nationalists have recently started to blackmail the country over the Wike/Fubara altercation.

Their theory is that Mr. Fubara is the first person of Ijaw origin who will be governor of Rivers state since 1999. Hence, they suggest that Wike’s strategy is to remove him from office thereby denying the ethnic group the opportunity to govern the state. Some leaders have accused President Tinubu of aiding and abetting Wike in this mission and threatened that some oil installations in the country may not be safe in the event of a Fubara impeachment!

The question now is how Nigerians cannot see the egomania of power holders for what it is. How is it that Ijaw nationalists are just seeing Wike’s dislike for them now? Where were they while the romance between their kinsman and Wike lasted? What did they say when the former Governor protected their son from the fangs of the Economic Financial Crime Commission (EFCC)? How is it difficult for these ethnic jingoists to understand that this is a fight between two people desperate for political survival and without any thought for the people who elected them? Nigerians must realise that the power elite only cares about themselves.

For instance, how is the condition of the Ikwerre people, who have had the fortune of having the last two Governors, better than their Ijaw compatriots? Do they have better schools or access to health facilities? Do they have better employment opportunities or get better remunerations than others? Do they buy things in a different market such that the high inflationary trends do not affect them?
It’s time for Nigerians to realise that they must come together to demand good governance in their country rather than remain pawns in the hands of leaders who throw up primordial sentiments at their convenience.

The Rivers state episode like several other sessions of political tensions we have witnessed is like kitchen fights about the quantum of food to be cooked and the portions to be appropriated by the gladiators. It is politics about the stomach and pockets of the stalwarts and ordinary Nigerians must rather than fight the politicians’ war, unite to take their country back.

Adedokun can be reached via X: @niranadedokun

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.