Rivers State emergency rule: A different view by Azu Ishiekwene

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s proclamation of emergency rule in Rivers State on Tuesday surprised me for reasons different from those for which he has been severely criticised.
The mildest criticism is that Tinubu’s failure to call the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to order was responsible for the crisis.
The more severe criticisms range from accusations that the President has subverted constitutional rule to charges of potential destabilisation at the behest of Wike.
A common point of agreement is that a civilian president should never have to declare emergency rule. That is the ideal.
But Rivers State before Tuesday presented a dire and complicated situation that stretched idealism to its elastic limits.

Chaos in slow motion
It’s convenient, especially for those who promoted and profited from the crisis, to pretend otherwise. Still, after the 27 state lawmakers loyal to Wike issued an impeachment notice, the outcome, if Governor Siminalayi Fubara had been impeached, might have been far worse for the state than can be contemplated under emergency rule. The proclamation was an unsolicited stitch in time.
If oil pipelines were already being blown up and militants deploying as the impeachment notice reached Fubara, what would have happened if the process had carried through? Rivers State has been chaos in slow motion for nearly two years, the only thriving business in the state being the politics of those who support Fubara and those who are against Wike.
The Supreme Court’s judgement invalidated the budget passed by Fubara and nullified the local government election. It affirmed the position of the 27 lawmakers, making Fubara’s government a lame duck. Emergency rule saved the governor from gunpoint, created a pause for the people to get their lives back, and made room for Wike and Fubara to stop and reflect. It’s a messy situation, but the counterfactual could have been worse.

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Between Wike and Fubara
Popular media has framed Fubara as the victim of a grasping, unforgiving godfather, which suits his comportment. But during this inconvenient pause, it might be helpful for the governor to reflect on what he might have done differently, something that pressure by those egging him on for their narrow, selfish reasons might not have given him the space to do
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s proclamation of emergency rule in Rivers State on Tuesday surprised me for reasons different from those for which he has been severely criticised.

The mildest criticism is that Tinubu’s failure to call the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to order was responsible for the crisis. The more severe criticisms range from accusations that the president has subverted constitutional rule to charges of potential destabilisation at the behest of Wike.

A common point of agreement is that a civilian president should never have to declare emergency rule. That is the ideal. But Rivers State before Tuesday presented a dire and complicated situation that stretched idealism to its elastic limits.
Chaos In Slow Motion

It’s convenient, especially for those who promoted and profited from the crisis, to pretend otherwise. Still, after the 27 state lawmakers loyal to Wike issued an impeachment notice, the outcome, if Governor Siminalayi Fubara had been impeached, might have been far worse for the state than can be contemplated under emergency rule. The proclamation was an unsolicited stitch in time.

If oil pipelines were already being blown up and militants deploying, as the impeachment notice reached Fubara, what would have happened if the process had been carried through? Rivers State has been chaos in slow motion for nearly two years, the only thriving business in the state being the politics of those who support Fubara and those who are against Wike.

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The Supreme Court’s judgment invalidated the budget passed by Fubara and nullified the local government election. It affirmed the position of the 27 lawmakers, making Fubara’s government a lame duck. Emergency rule saved the governor from gunpoint, created a pause for the people to get their lives back, and made room for Wike and Fubara to stop and reflect. It’s a messy situation, but the counterfactual could have been worse.
Between Wike and Fubara

Popular media has framed Fubara as the victim of a grasping, unforgiving godfather, which suits his comportment. But during this inconvenient pause, it might be helpful for the governor to reflect on what he might have done differently, something that pressure by those egging him on for their narrow, selfish reasons might not have given him the space to do.

In the public imagination, control of the state’s “political structure” is at the heart of the dispute between Fubara and Wike. Whether that is so, whether it’s about who the “authentic” party leader is, or it is more than what the public knows, Fubara and Wike know. We can only guess. But they both know.

Open War
The open war started after Fubara’s swearing-in when the governor wanted to install his candidate as speaker in the House of Assembly but failed. What was the point of demolishing the State House of Assembly complex built with hundreds of millions of naira of taxpayers’ money in December 2023 simply on the suspicion that the lawmakers were planning to impeach him there? Why did the governor think it was right to convene four of 31 lawmakers in his office to present the appropriation bill and then go on to implement it?
And why, after the peace deal brokered in Abuja, was it difficult for him to be his own man, free himself as the hostage of opportunistic local politicians and self-appointed opinion leaders and implement the decisions reached, instead of caving into busybodies in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) whose primary interest is to continue the unfinished war of the 2022 Convention by other means?

Atiku could not have forgotten that when his boss did it again in Ekiti State two years later, it was mainly to facilitate Obasanjo’s hijack of the state for his political convenience, after lawmakers claimed to have impeached the governor. Fayose had become a thorn in his side, and he vowed to remove him by all means, fair and foul… Atiku may argue that he had been estranged from the government then and could not bear vicarious liability. However, he remained a part of the government until the end and must endure its glory and shame.

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Atiku No 2 .
The PDP leadership and their cousins in Labour have never forgiven Wike for supporting Tinubu’s election. They have been quite loud in condemning the state of emergency. That’s their job as opposition. However, if the PDP is letting its testosterone rush get into its head and impair memory, we may need to remind the party how we got here.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has been quite vocal in condemning emergency rule in Rivers State. In his earnestness, he has forgotten that the government in which he was the Number Two man had a shambolic record of infidelity to constitutional rule. And that is saying it nicely.

One can argue that President Olusegun Obasanjo’s proclamation of emergency rule in Plateau State in 2004, though controversial, was inevitable because of the horrific deaths caused by the sectarian violence, which led to reprisals in other states. Yet, former Governor Joshua Dariye’s suspected links to the crisis made his suspension inevitable.

Bayelsa’s Playbook!
Atiku could not have forgotten that when his boss did it again in Ekiti State two years later, it was mainly to facilitate Obasanjo’s hijack of the state for his political convenience, after lawmakers claimed to have impeached the governor. Fayose had become a thorn in his side, and he vowed to remove him by all means, fair and foul.

Atiku may argue that he had been estranged from the government then and could not bear vicarious liability. However, he remained a part of the government until the end and must endure its glory and shame.
Or perhaps he would have preferred the impeachment of Fubara from Obasanjo’s Bayelsa playbook? In that case, instead of an emergency rule, Tinubu would have provided a haven where the majority 27 lawmakers would have met under heavy security protection to remove the governor, as Obasanjo did under slightly different circumstances, in the case of former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.

Amaechi’s Forgotten Diary

Former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, a longstanding foe of Wike, also weighed in, condemning the “power grab’s illegality.” He has a right to intervene and speak his mind. However, since he called the proclamation “an affront” to the rule of law and a power grab, it might be helpful to remind him of a typical, but by no means isolated, example from his record as governor.

The underlying currents may be similar – local politics gone rogue – but the consequences or potential consequences are not. Constitutional lawyers can debate the legal triggers because of the lack of clarity in Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution, compared with the 1960 Constitution, a pre-Republican document that gave the prime minister more expansive powers.

In 2013, when the position of chief judge in Rivers State was vacant, Amaechi appointed and swore in the president of the Customary Court of Appeal, Justice Peter Agumagu, against decency and the provisions of law. He joined issues with the National Judicial Commission (NJC), which was at its wit’s end to restrain him and keep him on the path of common sense. The state judiciary reeled under Amaechi’s blatant affront for one year, which he now conveniently forgets.

Apples and Oranges
Parallels have been drawn between the state of emergency in Rivers State and the one in 1962 during the Western Region crisis, especially as the latter was believed to have led the country down the slippery slope that eventually ended in the removal of the Tafawa Balewa government and the Civil War.

The underlying currents may be similar – local politics gone rogue – but the consequences or potential consequences are not. Constitutional lawyers can debate the legal triggers because of the lack of clarity in Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution, compared with the 1960 Constitution, a pre-Republican document that gave the prime minister more expansive powers.

While the emergency rule in the Western Region was mainly an opportunistic intervention by the federal government to undermine the Obafemi Awolowo-led opposition, the emergency in Rivers State was an inevitable step to prevent a potential descent into chaos, where the governor was not an innocent bystander.
Water in the Coconut

Since 1999, two administrations – Muhammadu Buhari’s and Umaru Yar’Adua’s being the only exceptions – have proclaimed emergency rule. Apart from 2013, when President Goodluck Jonathan left the governors of the three affected states in place because they had no link to the crises in their states, complicity has affected the scope of the application of emergency rule.

When Obasanjo threatened an emergency in Lagos, Tinubu said it was unacceptable because he was doing his best as governor to tackle the sectarian clashes in a small part of the state then. In Rivers, the governor is a part of the problem.
Those opposed to the proclamation should say how to leave Fubara in place and extract the water of peace from the coconut of Rivers State without breaking the shell on the head of the people.

Rivers State emergency rule: A different view by Azu Ishiekwene

How Wande Abimbola rejected IBB’s ING bait, and other stories (1)

Tunde Odesola

(Published in The PUNCH, on Friday, March 21, 2025)

Embarrassment has no truer depiction than the guilt a debtor feels each time the string of his indebtedness twangs at his soul. I am talking about an honest debtor here. A sincere debtor feels sad whenever his inability to mend his broken promises nudges his conscience. He sincerely wishes to pay but cannot, yet.

However, the insincere debtor, hard like the shell of a tortoise, is unperturbed whenever he remembers his empty repayment promises. He blinks like a toad on a full stomach, “My lender knows times are hard. I cannot come and kill myself, jare. I will pay someday,” he says with malicious arrogance.

Despite living in a cutthroat world of credit facilities, I dislike borrowing. However, due to banking bottlenecks, I occasionally need a quick loan. When this arises, my mind will never be at rest until I pay it off. Whenever I’m indebted, the chiefest of my prayer points will be the grace not to die suddenly so I can pay up my debt and not carry someone’s money to the grave.

I always say this to my lender, “Uhmm, if I die today and you start crying, people will think you are crying for me, they won’t know you are crying for your money. You would come to my wake, look at my corpse and say in your mind, ‘Look at his big head! He has carried my money to heaven, idiot!’”

My lender would laugh and say, “Ha, you are not serious. You are not going to die now. Do not talk like that!”

But I talk like that because I know death lurks in the shadow of every mortal. I know each minute is a gift; each breath – a favour.

A jolly good friend of mine, Idowu Bailey, was born on Wednesday, November 14. Last month, Bailey, a giant, danced at a wedding anniversary shindig on a Saturday, visited his mechanic on Tuesday, spoke with a friend on Wednesday, and on Thursday, he died in the parking lot of his workplace, right inside the car with which his wife had taken him to work. Born in 1962, Bailey was 62 when he died. Bailey had a good heart and left a good impression of himself on everyone.

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When he noticed our church pastor, Mr Peter Oyediran, had chosen the ‘Gorimapa’ hairstyle, which leaves no strand of hair on the head, Bailey presented a new set of clippers to the cleric, saying, “I observed you keep no hairs on your head nowadays. Here is a good set of clippers, sir.”

Debt. Since January last year, I have looked forward to writing a sequel to the series, “Wande Abimbola @ 91: How an àbíkú decided to live”, which I started in honour of the exemplary life of a former Vice Chancellor, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

The series was a debt I felt I owed to the integrity, dedication, courage and excellence that define the grass-to-grace story of a village boy, who rose from the relics of the ancient Oyo Empire to peak at the academic mountains of Harvard University, Boston University, Amherst College, University of Louisville, Kentucky; Colgate University, Smith College, Massachusetts; and Great Ife, among others.

But I could not bring myself to do a follow-up on my series on Abimbola because Nigeria is a land of ‘one week, plenty troubles’. And, to remain in touch with readers, a columnist’s commentaries should sync with current affairs and realities.

Here’s a rundown of my articles between November last year and March, this year: the nation woke up to a member of the House of Representatives, Alex Ikwechegh, dehumanising and threatening to make a taxi driver disappear. A few days after this, a violence-encouraging video of the Alapomu of Apomu, Oba Kayode Afolabi, surfaced online, charging some members of the Peoples Democratic Party to take up arms during an election. Days apart, the story of Godwin Emefiele’s alleged 753-duplex estate broke, then Dele Farotimi wrote a book, and the Timi of Ede knelt to the Emir of Ilorin.

Along the way came the king of Orile-Ifo, Oba Abdulsemiu Ogunjobi, who threatened a 73-year-old man, Pa Arinola Abraham, with death. Later, IBB sold the most dishonest autobiography of all time. Then Bola Tinubu’s Lagos State House of Assembully replaced democracy with tyranny just before Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan dragged Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, to the virtual superhighway, accusing him of tailgating.

Each week I tried to go back to the Wande Abimbola story, a calamitous story broke in Naija. Just this week, a state of emergency was foisted on Rivers State by the Asiwaju of Nigeria.

Since life is but a walking shadow and Baba Abimbola is 92, I pushed the pause button on my editorial desk to celebrate the Awise while he is alive. More so, President Tinubu breathed a six-month lifespan into the nostrils of the emergency rule in Rivers, so I have enough time to come back and paddle my canoe on the Rivers of turbulence.

This series is a further exploration of Abimbola’s phenomenon as a beacon of good leadership, transparency in public office and religious fidelity.

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To different people, Abimbola means different things. While many foreign religion worshippers call him a pagan, he is a hero to traditional religion adherents. Wande, the only surviving son of Iroko Abimbola, has spoken at the conclaves of world religious leaders, which included the Pope, upholding the truth of Ifa and radiating the essence of Yoruba culture and tradition.

Abimbola and the late MKO Abiola shared one thing in common. Both are abikus. “I am an abiku, who decided to stay after five comings. Abiola came 23 times before he chose to live.”

Abimbola and MKO met in the late 1960s at the Staff School of the University of Lagos. “I joined UNILAG as a senior research fellow in 1966 and I enrolled my children at the staff school. I took them to and fro the school. Abiola too was doing the same thing for his two children – Kola and his sibling. In the afternoon, we both got there before the school closed. It was while waiting for the school to close that we got talking. Abiola was an accountant with the International Telephone and Telegraph Corp,” the Awise Agbaye began.

He continued, “Abiola was a most jovial friend. He regularly visited me at my UNILAG house on Bode Thomas Street in Surulere, Lagos. When he comes, he would say, “Bàbá Àgbà, óò dè ní yòdí, óò dè ní béèrè énìkankan, óò dè je ka sere lo…,” exhorting me for not asking of him and urging me to let us go and hang out.

“Abiola told me he came from a very poor background and had to play a stringed musical instrument called ‘Osugbo’ to fend for himself. He loved me and I loved him, too. In 1972, I left UNILAG and went to Ife as a senior research fellow, so we lost contact temporarily. It was later, I began to read about him in newspapers and I began to wonder if it was the same Abiola who was my friend. One day, he sent an invite to me for the christening of his child. So, I went, and we reunited.

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“I soon became the vice chancellor, and he would visit me for three or four days. His convoy would come late into the night, and I would lodge him in the chancellor’s lodge, which was behind my lodge. Anytime he visited, the domestic staff knew they had hit a jackpot because he would give them a huge sum of money that they all would share. After sharing, each worker would get as much as N5,000 when their salary was less than N200,” Abimbola said.

After the world-acclaimed scholar finished his two-term tenure of seven years as V-C (1982-1989), he tried his hands in politics, emerging a senatorial candidate of the Social Democratic Party in Oyo State after he was rigged out of the governorship race, which he said he won. Abimbola said the late Strong Man of Ibadan politics, Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu, and some other Oyo political leaders appeased him with a senatorial ticket. “They said they knew I won the primary but that they want an Ibadan son, Kolapo Ishola, to be the governor. After consultations with my people in Oyo, I accepted and worked for Ishola in Oyo.”

Abimbola won his senatorial election by a landslide. When the National Assembly convened, he emerged as the Senate Majority Leader, making him a leading Yoruba voice in national politics at the time.

No sooner had the Senate convened than the majority leader attracted enemies to himself when he single-handedly repelled the move by senators to determine and approve their salaries.

It was also in his direction that the Ibrahim Babangida military junta first looked when searching for who would head the Interim National Government – after annulling the June 12, 1993, presidential election won by Chief MKO Abiola.

“I was contacted twice to come and head the Interim National Government. I think they chose me because I was the highest-ranking Yoruba political office holder then. They probably thought if they chose me, that would assuage the feelings of the Yoruba. Four reasons made me reject the offer,” Abimbola said.

To be continued.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

Facebook: @Tunde Odesola

X: @Tunde_Odesola

How Wande Abimbola rejected IBB’s ING bait, and other stories (1)

Nasir El-Rufai’s scorched-earth one-man opposition, By Farooq Kperogi

Like a stranded mariner gasping on the shores of irrelevance, former Kaduna State governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai writhes in the uneasy throes of power’s withdrawal. His disquiet, however, is less the quiet lament of a fallen statesman and more the tempestuous fury of a Shakespearean woman scorned.

He has become fiery, irascible, indignant, and unrelenting in his public expressions of rage towards his former friends in power who have isolated him. He is throwing the kitchen sink at the power structures in Kaduna and Abuja in an all-out effort to extract vengeance and to ward off potential ensnarement.

The former cushy, self-satisfied, and illiberal denizen of power who was the scourge of dissenters railing against tyranny, now finds himself wielding the very defiance he once crushed with arrogance and malevolent glee. He has become an accidental insurgent (a la “accidental public servant”) forged in the crucible of his own contradictions.

There is a part of me that loves this new insurrectionary, rebellious, activist, and intensely irate one-man band opposition that El-Rufai has opportunistically transmogrified into.

For one, he is providing the first real opposition to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration. Every democracy needs the well-aimed slings and well-informed counsel of a sharp-witted opposition to keep its leaders from sinking into the depths of self-satisfaction and insouciance.

Say what you will about El-Rufai, but his intellect, erudition, and rhetorical dexterity are top-notch and undeniable. Imagine if figures of his political stature, institutional access, and strategic acumen had chosen to be thorns in the current corridors of power. Perhaps, the Tinubu administration would have thought twice before treating Nigerians with the cavalier disregard that has become its trademark in the last two years.

For another, he has an opportunity to experience what his critics went through when he was a governor for eight years. He abducted critics, caused opponents to be tortured, bragged about reducing politicians he has displaced to mere “bloggers,” instrumentalized the courts to squelch dissent, etc.

Now, he posts social media updates about his former commissioners being “abducted,” about the judiciary being weaponized against his supporters and his past administration, about the “misuse of federal security agencies in the persecution of opposition leaders,” etc.

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Not only has El-Rufai become a “blogger,” once his favorite pejorative for social-media-active politicians he has dislocated in Kaduna, he has now plunged deeper into a lowly “content creator.” With the launch of a TikTok account, he’s gone from being a mere “blogger” to a digital hustler, complete with the undignified ritual of soliciting Nigerians to subscribe to his channel.

Yet, I am delighted that El-Rufai has joined our ranks. Professional “wailing wailers” like me (to use former presidential spokesman Femi Adesina’s agonizingly asinine and illiterate insult for government critics) welcome him to the club.

Nonetheless, my joy that he is inadvertently rendering a democratic service by the constancy and stridency of his strictures against the government has not blunted the acuteness of my awareness that he is an unbearably devious, self-seeking, hateful scoundrel who is only on a mission to avenge what he perceives as a personal affront to him.

As most people have already observed, had El-Rufai secured the minister of power position he was promised, his current antagonism toward the government would be as unimaginable as a cat lobbying for the rights of rats.

Not only would he have been a staunch defender of every government action, but he would have also directed his trademark vitriol at ordinary Nigerians suffocating under economic hardship. He would dismiss their grievances with characteristic scorn and cruelty.

Indeed, the same northern establishment he now courts and seeks to mobilize as a political cudgel would have been his favorite punching bag—just as it was in 2023, when he enthusiastically championed Bola Tinubu’s candidacy.

It takes an unnatural degree of slow-wittedness not to see that El-Rufai’s newfound disillusionment with the governments in Kaduna and Abuja reeks less of principle and more of a bruised ego nursing its wounds.

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In my July 27, 2019, column titled, “How Political Power Damages the Brain—and How to Reverse it,” I called attention to (temporarily) politically displaced whores of power like El-Rufai who pretend to identify with ordinary people in their moments of political trauma.

“Also look at previously arrogant, narcissistic, power-drunk prigs who have been kicked out of the orbit of power for any number of reasons. You’ll discover that they are suddenly normal again.

“They share our pains, make pious noises, condemn abuse of power, and identify with popular causes. The legendary amnesia of Nigerians causes the past misdeeds of these previous monsters of power to be explained away, lessened, forgiven, and ultimately forgotten. But when they get back to power again, they become the same insensitive beasts of power that they once were.”

Get El-Rufai back into power now or in 2017, he would be the same villainous backstabber he has always been. He would be the same annihilator of the homes of poor people. He would be the same horrid tormentor of critics.

In a September 20, 2019, article, I described him as “straight-up Nigeria’s most bigoted and most dangerous public official alive.”

El-Rufai’s latest political metamorphosis is less a transformation than a temporary realignment born of personal grievance rather than ideological conviction. His brand-new zeal for opposition, while inadvertently serving the democratic process, is unmistakably fueled by wounded pride and thwarted ambition.

The same man who once ruled with an iron fist, silencing critics with impunity, now fashions himself as the voice of the oppressed, railing against the very structures of power he once upheld with ruthless enthusiasm. His current posture as an anti-establishment crusader is not the product of principle but of exclusion, making his activism less an act of courage than an elaborate act of self-preservation.

Yet, even as he momentarily aligns with the forces of resistance, history warns against mistaking his opportunistic dissent for genuine reform. Should fortune return him to the corridors of power, El-Rufai would waste no time reverting to the autocratic instincts that have long defined him. He would crush opposition, weaponize state institutions, and wield power with the same reckless abandon that now makes him a pariah.

Today’s dissenter is often tomorrow’s despot. To embrace him uncritically is to risk aiding yet another cycle of tyranny dressed in the fleeting garb of rebellion.

Nasir El-Rufai’s scorched-earth one-man opposition, By Farooq Kperogi

Farooq Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of journalism.