This week, the almajiris left by the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, in the cabinet of the Rivers State governor, Sim Fubara, handed in their resignations. It was the second time they had done so as practitioners of political servitude. They are joined in the criminal erosion of the powers of a state by members of the Martin Amaewhule-led group of lawmakers who got elected on the platform of a political party and then collectively bestowed their seats on a different party on account of lust for power. By that action, they cast question marks on the assumption that they were actually elected by the people of Rivers State. The utter contempt they showed for the people gave them out as a shameless bunch of moral midgets. Through their own act of political buffoonery, in the manner of the senators-elect who chose to go sell groundnuts while they were supposed to be getting inaugurated as senators in 2019, the characters parading themselves as the “authentic” members of the Rivers State House of Assembly became impostors. They vacated their positions under the leadership of their god the emperor of Rivers State.
Said the human rights lawyer, Femi Falana: “Unless you can show and demonstrate that there is division in a political party that sponsored your election, you cannot remain in any legislative arm if you decamp to another party. It may be very difficult to persuade the court to allow them to remain in the legislative house unless they are prepared to go back to the people and have their mandate renewed by the people. The Supreme Court made this clear in the case of Adetunde and the Labour Party, that you cannot decamp and then remain a member of a legislative house in Nigeria unless you can show that there is a division in your party. It doesn’t mean a division in a local government or a state. It has to be on the national level.” I concur.
The real story is, of course, the script written by Wike to transmute into a civilian dictator, seize the state in the manner of his principal, and use that template to clinch the presidency at some future time. By unilaterally appointing his successor’s commissioners and the state’s legislators, etc, the FCT governor aimed to make Rivers State his personal property, and the people slaves on his plantation. But his plot is fast blowing up in his face.
As governor, Wike ran Rivers State like a despot. His word was law and no one was supposed to have a contrary opinion. During the COVID-19 crisis, he decreed instant detention for an essential worker, the MD of the Rivers State electricity distribution company, the same company that had donated massively to the state’s COVID-19 containment effort. He demolished the hotels of perceived opponents for supposedly violating COVID-19 protocols, rendering many jobless in his despotic display of power.
Wike castigated traditional rulers, many of them old enough to father him. I concede good performance in terms of infrastructure to Wike, but beyond that he is everything a leader should not be: high-minded, opinionated, despotic and narcissistic. Wike ran Rivers like a brigand, dolling out state funds like cheese. The man alleged to have halted scholarships and other social welfare programs for Rivers indigenes doled out an estimated N11.25 billion to outsiders. If the N500 million given to the victims of the 2018 herder genocide in Benue State, the N500 million for the victims of the 2022 Sokoto boat mishap and the N200 million donated to the victims of the 2022 Bayelsa flood disaster can be justified, what about the N100 million donated to the Committee of Wives of Lagos State Officials (COWLSO)? Wike made damnable donations using Rivers State money. When MKO Abiola donated funds across the length and breadth of the North, it was his own money, not state funds, that he was expending. When Peter Obi makes donations, it is from his personal money. The people aren’t fools.
Last year, the deceiver mouthed southern presidency as a gimmick for self-promotion. When it became clear that the presidential ticket would not be coming his way, he applied the desperation gear, lobbying the Atiku camp to place him on the presidential ticket. Said the singing senator Dino Melaye: “Wike wanted to be vice-presidential candidate to Atiku. He (Wike) called me 19 times in two hours when Atiku was going to mention his vice-presidential candidate, lobbying me with everything possible to influence Atiku to announce him as his running mate. I have witnesses.” Southern Presidency thus doomed, Wike went wild. Members of his own party could not even hold a presidential campaign in Rivers State.
By literally squeezing Fubara into a shoebox, Wike aimed to continue his stranglehold on Rivers State as a means of actualizing his depraved lusts. He wants to be governor both of Rivers and Abuja, showing utter contempt for the long-suffering people of Rivers State who have endured his eccentricities for the better part of a decade. Wike would have been a nobody if he had not gained the support of the Jonathans and even Rotimi Amaechi, but he acts like he is above everyone else. In that venture, he is cheered on by certain enablers of fascist state capture, some of them previously his mortal enemies. Apparently, he and his acolytes counted on the presumed docility of Fubara, but they may actually be in for the shocker of their lives.
In my December 23, 2023 piece titled The partition of Rivers State, I wrote: “It is clear that this “peace deal”, about which there is nothing peaceful, is all about the 2027 ambitions of its authors, and nothing else. It is the most blatant, in-your-face colonial heist I have seen since the return to civil rule. The authors did not even pretend to care about Rivers people: it was all about their vaulting ambitions…Now, by the terms of the Abuja “peace deal”, the errand boys planted in the Rivers cabinet and the legislature to guarantee Wike’s continued dictatorship in 2027 are to be restored to their former positions in defiance of law and logic… If the Rivers people do not rise against colonialism, they will be plundered by pirates till there is no River in sight.”
Well, it seems that the people got the memo.
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