Rivers: An emperor’s road to harakiri
By Chidi Amuta
On May 17, 2024, this column published a piece with the tittle “An Emperor and His Nemesis”. It was a prognostic analysis of the impending political crisis in Rivers State because of the suffocating hold of ex-governor Wike on his surrogate, Siminalayi Fubara, the incumbent governor of the state. Recent events in the politics of the state, especially the just concluded successful local government election coup by the governor, indicate an inevitable nasty end to Mr. Wike’s untidy career as an overbearing political godfather. We may indeed be witnessing Mr. Wike’s speedy race into political irrelevance and inevitable harakiri.
The drama of unrelenting political bad behaviour in Rivers State has entered a decisive street corner. Incumbent governor Mr. Siminalayi Fubara has dealt what looks like a killer blow on his principal political adversary godfather. The Governor, pushed to the wall for most of his one and half year tenure, has managed to survive on political life support. It has been a combination of legal somersaults and political gymnastics.
Conflicting court orders and judgments have climbed on each other just as political stratagems have wrestled with each other. But last weekend, Governor Fubara’s latest political ingenuity paid off. He organized a local government election with all candidates for the 23 local governments drawn from a strange APP – All Peoples Party. In a political quicksand, all but one of the local government council chairmanships were won by candidates of the strange party. By this masterstroke, Governor Fubara has further spinned the ever turning political wheel on his chief adversary, FCT minister, Nyesom Wike. This outcome means that the grassroots political machinery of the state is now squarely in the hands of the embattled governor.
In the interim, all the political outcomes seem to favour the governor even though the aftershocks are still gathering storm. But most of the significant political voices in the state and around the country have come out openly to condemn Mr. Wike’s long standing nuisance value in the politics of the state. While the Rivers storm continues to blow, most speculations are that Mr. Wike’s imperial reign over Rivers politics seems to be entering its final days.
No one can ignore the tragic aftermath of the recent local government elections either. At least three local government secretariats have been razed. Property has been destroyed while some lives have been lost. The credibility of the Nigeria police as an agent of law and order has been badly degraded as accusations of partisanship fly around. Predictably, the judicial battles are far from over. The Abuja Federal High Court has ruled in favour of the legitimacy of the pro-Wike opposition House of Assembly. Governor Fubara has since rushed to the Supreme Court to challenge this ruling.
In the aftermath of the post-local government election agitations and violence, the partisans have reverted to their expected recourse. Governor Fubara has taken recourse to government’s responsibility to investigate the violent reactions and identify their authors. On their part, the disaffected partisans have continued to protest and prepare for further disorder and court mischief.
The Rivers political crisis is far from over. At best, the grassroots will be dominated by governor Fubara while the legislative power in Port Harcourt may be shared between the governor’s loyalists and his opposition legislators. The rest is a matter for political navigation.
Unfortunately, as the unfolding drama goes on, there is very little real governance going on in the state. If this turf war goes on and worsens, Rivers State may be another sad case of a state with immense resources but an arrested development. The ordinary people of the state may end up as the ultimate losers in this drama of an emperor with his ultimate nemesis.
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The nasty wrestle between Governor Fubara and his mentor reveals the full gamut of intrigues that usually characterize the relationship between political godfathers and their surrogates. Mr. Wike did an untidy job of handing the baton of state governorship to his former state Accountant General. The illicit logic was perhaps that the critical challenge of all former governors in Nigeria is the extent to which they control the bag of nasty tricks played with public money while they were in office. Who better to guard your money secrets when you leave office than the chief book keeper of the state? That thinking seems to be what fueled the emergence of Mr. Fubara. The childish logic behind that calculation seems to have gone up in smoke now that governor Fubara, has rediscovered that he is first and foremost a state governor and not an errand boy of a departed emperor. His recognition seems to be that he needs to be in both office and in power in order to command credibility no matter how they got to office.
The trouble is perhaps that Mr. Wike schemed to put Fubara in office and not in power from the beginning. The governor seems to have realized that the opposite is what he needs. He needs to be in both power and in political office. The key hubris committed by Mr. Wike is that he did not allow Fubara to be minimally in office. He therefore reportedly surrounded the new governor with commissioners whom he himself chose. He reportedly dictated the portfolios, reporting line and created a separate line of reporting which ultimately ended with him in faraway Abuja. Most importantly, all the state legislators were sponsored and loyal to Mr. Wike.
As it were, Wike was also to informally run Rivers State from his duty post in Abuja. He also put in place a coterie of local government chairpersons in all 23 local governments. Effectively, the entire political structure of Rivers State was in Mr. Wike’s back pocket. He himself openly boasted that he had paid the nomination fees of all political office holders in the state.
In order to keep his home base in tact politically, Wike maintained an eagle eyed watch over the state as an extension of his political manor. He had while in office either alienated or marginalized all major political voices in the state. An army of political jobbers and handpicked warlords maintained surveillance for Mr. Wike from inside the governor’s office, the state assembly and the local governments. An imperial rule was put in place over an entire state and has lasted for nearly 9 years.
But in pursuit of his imperial oversight over the state, Mr. Wike forgot a few rules of power incumbency. A man in a powerful political office such as that of a state governorship would want to be seen to wield the power of his office. Secondly, there can be only one captain on board a ship of state. The commissioners were either serving Wike or Fubara. Similarly, the state legislators could not afford to be at variance with the governor who pays their salaries, allowances and sundry costs. Most importantly, the rule that governs the relationship of a political godfather and his surrogate is ruled by distance. The political godfather must keep his distance.
A godfather who insists on having overriding influence over his surrogate and also sharing political visibility and the limelight with the surrogate is preparing for suicide. Wike wanted both control, influence and visibility. At the slightest opportunity, he was present in Rivers State, attending church events, child naming ceremonies and inconsequential political hangouts. He readily converted them into childish political sermons and an opportunity to visit key constituencies and holding sundry political meetings. Confronted with such a godfather, the incumbent who wants to survive in office has only one choice: commit political regicide in order to regain his freedom and realize the object of his ascendancy.
Ordinarily, President Tinubu should have intervened to ease the political tension. Instead, the role of President Tinubu in the crisis is a bit more problematic. He had a primary responsibility to ensure peace and security in Rivers State failing which he would be confronted with an impossible national security challenge. He needed to protect Wike who had become his political axe man in Rivers in order to use him to guarantee APC support in the strategic state.
Ostensibly, Wike had risked his political neck in order to guarantee both electoral victory and political support for Tinubu and the APC in Rivers. The President needed to play multiple impossible roles: impartial political arbiter as head of state, interested political leader of an embattled APC in Rivers, the protector of the political interest of his minister of the strategic FCT. That was the source of the early agreement that restored minimal co-operation between Wike and Fubara. But that respite evaporated soon enough because it was untenable and not founded in any sensible appreciation of the realities of Rivers politics. Tinubu’s earlier intervention was too heavily weighted in favour of Wike to be tenable.
But the grounds of that agreement were precarious and tenuous. It did not have understanding or control of the crucial factors that determine what happens in Rivers politics. The flow of money to oil the machinery of support cannot be controlled from Abuja at this point. There is no open campaign and so ‘political money’ cannot be used to buy support in the state. There is a limit to Wike’s personal war chest. He is not contesting an election in the state and cannot run riot with FCT resources as he probably could with state resources as Rivers State governor. Only Mr. Fubara has control over the money and power required to keep political support in Rivers State.
Most importantly, time has passed in favour of the governor and his consolidation of power. He has reached out to his Ijaw roots. They in turn have taken possession of their son in power. Fubara’s governorship is no longer a private arrangement between him and Wike. It is now an Ijaw governorship pitted against an upland conspiracy symbolized by Wike.
In recent times, Ijaw nationalism has acquired an unmistakable militancy which it has weaponized in pursuit of resource control at national and international levels. Niger Delta nationalism in pursuit of resource equity in Nigeria has become part of the international vocabulary about minority rights in the new world. The ability of the Ijaw to make life impossible for the rest of Nigeria is no longer in doubt. That capacity is even more enlarged in the context of states like Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta especially.
Therefore, Mr. Wike’s open threats to Fubara’s governorship reminded the governor that he is primarily an Ijaw son. As the political table seems to have turned in favour of Fubara, Tinubu has no choice than to retreat and find cover under the fire power of the changed canvas of the confrontation. He cannot afford to endanger the national oil and gas golden goose of the Niger Delta. He cannot also afford to back a minister who seems to be losing his support base very fast. It is safer to play and sound neutral and statesmanlike. This is why Tinubu has retracted to the “law and order” safe trench while leaving Wike to fend for himself.
Meanwhile, the crisis has altered the political landscape of partisan alliances in Rivers State. Key political heavy weights of the old PDP in Rivers have repositioned on the side of the governor and away from the ever belligerent Wike. Key political figures like Odili, Secondus, Opara, Omehia and some in the Amaechi APC have swung towards the governor. Unfortunately, there is no end to the number of political enemies that Wike made during his imperial overlordship of the state as governor. These have now become natural allies of the governor. Inside his own party, the PDP, Mr. Wike may not find the support to fight a local battle in the state. A state that had previously been celebrated as a PDP state is now so badly shaken that it is neither a PDP state nor an APC state. Wike has himself become something of a political bat, neither a bird nor a mammal. He is neither APC nor PDP.
At the national level, he is tolerated by the APC hierarchy as the president’s hatchet man and ‘friend’ but a risky political capital. If Tinubu admits him into APC, it will be a risk he took alone and may have to pay for later. The PDP at the national level cannot re-embrace Wike because he is a divisive figure who has grossly damaged the party and literally neutralized its national and state chances.
The interesting political spectacle that lies ahead in Rivers State is not the plight of Fubara. The governor has finally dug into the essential power nexus of the state and also eroded the grassroots power base of his traducer.
What lies ahead is the fate that lies ahead of Mr. Wike. His home base is degraded. His political solidarity in the state is splintered. What remains of it are merely mendicants and lightweights, people who rely on Wike for handouts to keep afloat. Most politically consequential Rivers people have moved on away from Wike.
His national partisan affiliation is doubtful. His continued political relevance now hangs mostly on his relationship with President Tinubu and his nuisance presence as FCT minister. If he loses the confidence of Tinubu or loses his portfolio as FCT minister, he might as well find himself an exile home in Abuja.
He has to face the many tragic possibilities that await a political godfather when they run out of relevance and options. First, he could be chased into involuntary exile by his erstwhile surrogate. The man he created and installed could make life impossible for him by eroding all his leverage on resources and patronage. He might even need the written permission of the incumbent to visit his home village in extreme cases. The godfather could be literally “killed” politically by being denied political followership and relevance in his erstwhile power base.
In all these gruesome possibilities, what we witness is the previous man of power, a deserted emperor walking towards a deserved hara-kiri.
