IT is no longer news that there is an intractable political crisis in the oil-rich state of Rivers, located in the South-South region of Nigeria. It is also no news, at all, that the crisis revolves around two dramatis personae : Nyemson Wike and Siminalayi Fubara. Wike has been in power since the year 2000. He served two terms as a local government chairman in Rivers State, he served as minister and he also served two terms as governor of Rivers State. This is as much as to say that Wike must have been drinking, and, perhaps, is still drinking generously, from the palm wine of power for close to 25 years now, serving Nigeria presently as the current FCT Minister in Abuja under the APC regime led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Until he became governor of Rivers State in 2023, Siminalayi Fubara was less known because he was an Accountant General in Rivers State who served Wike for very many years.
Perhaps, this explains why some political pundits argue that Wike found in Fubara a right choice for his replacement in 2023 because Fubara was his boy with the capacity to cover his financial malfeasance while he served as Governor of Rivers State. But that is a matter for another story and for another day. As a former Accountant General of the oil-rich state, Fubara is expected to have a good knowledge, or at least an idea, of revenue derivation and, of course, the amount, manner and methods of revenue generation in Rivers State. Unfortunately, this was the beginning of the trouble between Fubara and his boss. Three months into office as Governor, Fubara demanded to have an update about revenue generation from the chairman of the board of Rivers Internal Revenue Generation Service (RIRS). Allegedly, the chairman of the board, a Wike appointee, was shocked and very quickly intimated Wike, his boss, in Abuja. Wike, now FCT Minister, was piqued by what he considered to be Fubara’s effrontery and arrogance. But by now the fire of anger and pride had flared up and relations between Wike and Fubara became strained and frosty; what with plans for impeachment and irate Ijaw youths burning down the State Assembly complex to stop the impeachment process against their own Ijaw brother, Governor Fubara.
At this time also, the Rivers State House Assembly was clearly divided into two factions: the pro-Wike group led by Marthins Amaewhule and 25 others who hurriedly went to another part of the city and read an impeachment order against Fubara, and four other members led by Edison Ehie, apparently loyal to Fubara, who equally went to another part of the city to suspend the pro-Wike group for not following due process and for impeaching Governor Fubara for no good reason. The two factions also went to court to get orders and counter orders. It was a war of political wills.
At this time, it became apparent that the oil-rich-state had degenerated into a metaphor of all that is wrong with our country Nigeria. And as things stand now, Rivers State has become a battlefield on which is fought a continuous battle between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those forces determined to dismantle it. It is a battle between those who do the pulling and the majority of us who are meant only to be pulled. We must concede that the Presidency made an intervention on December, 18,2023 and handed both parties an 8- point resolution. But while Governor Fubara was trying to implement six out of the 8-point resolution, the pro-Wike camp remained adamant, defiant and resolute. And to make matters worse, the Presidency, in a dramatic turn of events, accused Governor Fubara of oil sabotage and declared a State of Emergency in Rivers State on Tuesday March 18, 2025. Now, several questions could be asked concerning President Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State. One, is Emergency rule constitutional in our Democracy? Two, is this declaration of emergency rule not a glamorized patriotism or a neo-fascist dictatorship? Three, is the emergency rule not a show of force or extravagant ambition? But most fundamentally, has the emergency rule brought peace to the oil-rich state?
Here, we must understand peace to mean the absence of war, fear, conflict, anxiety, suffering and violence. And this would also mean that Peace is primarily concerned with creating and maintaining a just order in society and the resolution of conflicts by non-violent means. It was the famed Norwegian Peace scholar, Johan Galtung, who identified two kinds of Peace namely: negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is the absence of direct violence like war, fear and conflict at both the individual, regional and international levels.
Positive peace, on the other hand, means the absence of unjust structures and the presence of justice, freedom, development and inner peace at the individual level. Taken together, the approach taken by President Tinubu in resolving the political crisis in Rivers State is the most clearest example of Negative peace. In other words, there may be no direct violence on the streets of Port Harcourt; there may be no gunshots in the air or corpses on the streets. Yet there is no justice, no freedom and no democracy. If the Nigerian government is sincere about resolving the conflict in Rivers State, it could have tried negotiation which is another viable method of conflict resolution in a democracy. Negotiation is a basic means of getting what you want from others. Negotiation is a back- and -forth communication designed to reach an agreement when two parties have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed. As a matter of fact, the crisis in Rivers State requires only the kind of negotiation that would allow many people to participate in the decision-making process. The declaration of emergency rule is no solution to this crisis, it is only tantamount to a rape of democracy. As a matter of fact, the proper method to resolve the crisis in River State is the kind of Negotiation called Principled Negotiation.
This kind of negotiation is both hard and soft to the parties in dispute and it insists on deciding issues on their merits rather than through the haggling process. This kind of negotiation suggest that President Tinubu would have looked for mutual gains where ever possible and where the interests of Wike and Fubara conflict, the President would have insisted that the result should be based on some fair standards independent of the will of either side. The method of principled negotiation is usually hard on the merits and soft on the people. It employs no tricks and no posturing. It shows you how to obtain what you are entitled to in a decent and honest manner. Most importantly, principled negotiation would have been a huge lesson for both Wike and Fubara, and perhaps, one may add, posterity.
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With the arbitrary declaration of Emergency Rule in Rivers State, the city of Portharcourt offers Nigerian citizens/audiences a comic, theatrical admixture of farce and burlesque. On the one hand, there is a queer irony at work: we have a hired crowd of women dressed in white carrying placards in support of Emergency rule in a nascent democracy like Nigeria. On the other hand, we have another set of women all clad in red denouncing emergency rule and calling for Fubara’s reinstatement. Whether it is through long marches on the streets of Portharcourt or peaceful protests, the emergency rule is symptomatic of the Negative Peace that exists in Rivers State. But more than that, between these three Elephants: Tinubu, Wike and Fubara who among them is concerned with confirming our humanity? And on the other side, who among them is determined to destroy or dismantle it by killing us citizens like little ants? Here again, the choice is ours! Ultimately, however, to paraphrase Wole Soyinka,’history will lay its heavy hand on those who led the nation by the nose on a tortuous ride to a destination that did not exist, even while dissipating the vast fortunes of the nation.’
- Doki is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Jos, Nigeria.
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