Regarding the ‘open letter’ to Sim Fubara

BY AMAOPUSENIBOBOBO SOFIRI BROWN

There is an “open letter” to the Governor of Rivers State His Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Joseph Fubara on some Internet media platforms by Niyi Adebayo.

It echoes an opinion deliberately cooked with subtle spicing for what is clearly a badly contaminated propaganda porridge, for public consumption.

It is at most an attempt to dilute President Tinubu’s poisonous dish served as a compulsory menu.

Like Slaves Rivers people must eat it and say thank you, because we are helpless: an imposition on Rivers State as a conquered people, no more no less!

That is what a State of Emergency in the circumstance from October 30, 2023 to March 18, 2025 translates to!

The news of this contraption has been condemned by many Nigerians at home and in Diaspora.
It is a FACT that most commentaries so far found the action of President Tinubu ly disturbing. So too the approval later arranged by a National Assembly in hushed voices, against the constitution that called for two thirds majority. That was expected but still deeply unpalatable to decent citizens.

They cannot understand how a forsworn democrat and once-upon -a-time advocate of social justice and true federalism, like President Tinubu will play the role of what appears to portray His Excellency as the hand of Esau in the drama of darkness declared over Rivers State since October 30, 2023.

So what did Niyi Adebayo write?

It is important to capture the substance as I see it, because the ideas it canvasses are being pushed forward quite laboriously in different versions by some quarters.
So it cannot be seen as a one man’s innocent but misguided analysis.

It is more likely an organized culinary project with equal dash of hemlock to spice it in any version.

The view is in three parts namely that first, Governor Siminialayi Fubara should be grateful to President Tinubu for proclaiming an unconstitutional State of Emergency on Rivers State. The reality of its lack of constitutional merit has been argued in the public domain and even the National Assembly that came after a Sole Administrator had been sworn in. The National Assembly stumbled and wobbled in character to make more of a procedural mess of what the 1999 constitution as amended envisaged.

No room for voice vote was provided in the constitution to redeem such an illegality!

The story now is that we should be jumping for joy that the State of Emergency was President Tinubu’s great master stroke of benevolence to save His Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Fubara from a more hateful plan of impeachment by an unnamed group.

If President Tinubu knew there was such a hateful group at work, why didn’t he simply unmask and defang them by a robust jail term through the Judicial process?
Or will they tell us that Mr President was afraid the Judiciary is helpless to tackle those involved?

Secondly the view canvasses that those who criticize President Tinubu’s State of Emergency are likely those who didn’t vote for him.
No shred of evidence was advanced in this regard.

It even assumes and illogically so that everyone who voted for President Tinubu has voted to support every misdeed of government under Tinubu, in advance.
And worse still, since INEC gave Tinubu over 8m votes to emerge as President in 2023, it means that logically more than 78m out of 87m that collected PVCs according to published INEC records, do not support President Tinubu.

It reduces President Tinubu’s support base to about 11%.
That argument keddled by Niyi Adebayo and group, is a great disservice to Mr President and Nigeria’s democracy.

And finally that His Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Sim Fubara ( as many have learnt to call him) should think of concessions to make to FCT Minister, to grease an agreement with an angry God-father who made him Governor.

Quite frankly, the pack of illogicality and disregard for FACTS render such a view as nonsense!
First is that President Tinubu never tried to hide his bias against Governor Siminialayi Fubara from December 2023 when Mr President intervened openly in the crisis brewing.

It was manifest in an 8-point agreement of December 2023 that sought to tie Governor Fubara and Rivers State people like a goat for BBQ.
Every decent citizen would ask President Tinubu, please what wrong did Governor Fubara do as at December 2023, to warrant a failed attempt to impeach him by 27 legislators who defected from PDP as led by Martins Amaehule?

Is it not noteworthy that the President as a mediator had acknowledgedone party to the crisis ( ie the defected legislators) as his children, in the 8-point agreement of December 2023?
That was after they declared for APC which is the President’s political party.

Was that the handwork of Governor Fubara?

President Tinubu never told Rivers State, Niger Delta and Nigeria what impeachable offence Governor Fubara had committed then!

Thereafter FACTS show that Governor Fubara secured court approval to spend Rivers State budget to improve the lives of Rivers people. And His Excellency has done so without borrowing.

Also why was it too difficult for President Tinubu to call FCT Minister His Excellency Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike to stop his brazen interference in Rivers State government?

Isn’t it instructive to Niyi Adebayo and his likes that in March 2025 President Tinubu invited PANDEF and Niger Delta dignitaries with Governor Fubara, FCT Minister and the 27 legislators who openly defected from the House of Assembly, to attend a second Presidential mediation session, but repeated the same bias against Governor Fubara?

PANDEF secretariat issued a Press Release in which they not only pointed out the anomaly to Mr President but also informed him of a follow -up Media briefing ( one of those rapid- fire media footprints) by His Excellency Chief Wike just about 48 hours after the meeting with President Tinubu.

As usual with all his media briefings on the orchestrated crisis between defected legislators and Governor of Rivers State, the FCT Minister left no one in doubt that an impeachment plot was cooking.
Yet President Tinubu said nothing about it!

PANDEF’s Press Release noted two significant and curious elements.

First was that FCT Minister was available to do a quickly organized media briefing, but was inaccessible to a peace delegation by the organization sent to meet with him in compliance with President Tinubu’s advice to PANDEF.

Secondly, PANDEF pointed out that the 27 defected former legislators now imposed on Rivers State by a 5-man Supreme Court judgement also made themselves unavailable to have the governor of Rivers State to re-present the 2025 Budget as curiously directed by the 5-man Supreme Court .

Please remember that the 27 defectors are being imposed on Rivers State in negation of a precedent set by a 7-man Supreme Court in earlier cases of similar nature that enforced the constitutional provision that defectors must lose their seats in the House of Assembly.

Why is Rivers State defection case being treated with such predetermined disregard for judicial precedence?

Is that the Rule of Law?

Finally there is this small amusing claim which predictably showed up as third element in Niyi Adebayo’s argument.
It is the falsehood that His Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Fubara owes His Excellency Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike some unpaid debts and baskets of gratitude as agreement for becoming the Governor of Rivers State.

Please who owes who? FACTS show that Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Fubara watched as an Ijaw couple of President Jonathan and his wife enlarged Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike’s ministerial platform in Abuja from 2012 -2015 and encouraged him to vie for governorship of Rivers State. As a FACT Governor Fubara’s auntie Her Excellency Dame Dr Patience Jonathan held Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike’s hand and passed him to Rivers people and Ijaw Elders to anoint him as governor of Rivers State against the 2015 election.

In addition Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Joseph Fubara as director of finance and later accountant general of Rivers state, stood between His Excellency Chief Wike’s financial dealings as governor of Rivers state and EFCC elephant traps.

What were the terms of agreement between Wike and Fubara at the time?

Like a true Ijaw son of Rivers State Governor Fubara bears the burden of service under Governor Wike with dignified silence.

Let no one trouble Governor Siminialayi Fubara with petty lies and fabricated cruelty to humiliate Rivers people and our State economy.

How is it logical and the Rule of law that the revenue due to Rivers State is withheld by Supreme Court on the grounds that an elected Governor Fubara did not present the 2025 budget to 27 defected legislators but the same revenue will be released to a Sole Administrator who will not present any budget to Rivers people or has no signs of any credible guideline to involve Rivers people in a public hearing on their budget in a Federal System of government under a civilian administration?

The mischief organized against Governor Siminialayi Fubara and Rivers people, couldn’t have matured at a better season.

It is the season when adherents of two of the major religions in Nigeria i.e. Christianity and the Muslim faithful, are locked in fasting and prayers.

His Excellency Amaopusenibo Sir Siminialayi Joseph Fubara and Rivers people will go to this local Golgotha fabricated in Abuja with faith in the risen Christ who conquered all injustice at Calvary.

Today many in Nigeria who didnt have any sympathy before now for Governor Siminialayi Fubara are rallying behind His Excellency’s cross as Rivers people tremble under the injustice of our State’s denigration and long planned internal colonialism which could play to boost the economy of Lagos State.

As Jesus Christ told daughters of Jerusalem who were weeping at the social injustice of a cruel decision by Pilate who found no fault in him: Nigerians, please weep for yourselves that the Feudal System can so easily in a so-called democracy take from a state it’s sovereignty and reduce all the citizens to Slaves under a Strong man and his cronies. Remember they found no fault in him!