The public has been treated to some settlement of the political crisis that has engulfed Rivers state since after 2023. President Tinubu and his Rivers political ‘Warrant Chief’, FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, have been crowing to the hearing of all that they have struck a deal on the palaver. The sketchy details indicate that Tinubu will shortly call off the state of emergency and re-install Fubara in the Port Harcourt Government House.
Reportedly, Mr. Fubara has agreed that he will be a single term ‘compliant’ governor, ceding place to whoever Wike and Tinubu decide will fly the APC flag in 2027. Fubara would resume a subservient relationship with King Wike and allow him significant inroads into the affairs of the state especially the money traffic. There are other unprintable details of the agreement that are not fit for the consumption of a decent public. In all likelihood, some guarded truce is to come into effect in the troubled state and all factions are to sheathe their swords till the fire next time.
On the surface, the peace deal is good for national security in that sensitive corner of the nation. It is welcome news for the people of Rivers state who have been virtually without a functional government since after the 2023 elections. It is also welcome relief for Mr. Fubara who has been literally boxed into an impossible corner for most of his troubled tenure as governor. He was hardly allowed to unpack his suit case before being called out to fight for his political life. The truce deal also appears good for president Tinubu whose credentials as a leader have been called to question on the basis of his handling of the frequent troubles in Rivers state.
Outside these generous concessions, everything about the new Rivers peace deal is spurious, suspicious and tenuous. In response to the impending euphoria over this political cease fire, I want to enter a wide ranging dissention.
The Tinubu and Wike truce deal is merely an understanding. At best, it is likely to usher in a short spell of quiet to allow preparations for 2027 to gather steam and gain ground. As a mere cessation of hostilities, it will merely drive the hostile forces underground to a zone where they can hardly be controlled. The reasons are abundant. The lines of political disputation in Rivers State are not synonymous with just Wike versus Fubara.
It is more complex than that. It is Wike and associates versus Fubara and tribesmen. Tinubu is not in a vantage position to broker peace in the state . His party, the APC, has only a tenuous foothold in the state. The dominant faction of the APC in the state remains the Amaechi wing which Wike used the security forces to scatter and destabilize. That faction is now likely to join the new ADC coalition and leave the APC an empty chamber. The truce will give them room to regroup and regain momentum but under a new political umbrella.
Even within the PDP which Wike has shredded nationally, the party’s hold on the state is predicated on Fubara’s continued relevance in the apex power tussle. If Mr. Fubara is now barred from seeking a second term in office, he will have no incentive to decamp to the APC or recruit followers for the party. If he has political creativity, he should initatie another deal that makes his joining the APC contingent on the removal of the ban on a possible second term for him.
Mr. Fubara is not likely to stick out his already strained neck except it will make him stronger and render Wike weaker and redundant. By the eve of 2027, Wike will have to decide on his precise partisan affiliation. He is either in APC to bolster Tinubu’s re-election bid or back in the PDP which he will have pulverized by then. It is doubtful if indeed the PDP will remain in serious electoral contention In 2027.
In the interim, the coalition of opposition forces now in the making may rally round the banner of the Peter Obi to complete the routing of Tinubu and the APC in Rivers State, a process that was well underway in 2023. The coalition has ready strong leadership in Amaechi and his followers. In Rivers State, the new coalition will be an anti-Wike and anti-Tinubu coalition.
There are other powerful forces and factions with equally strong stakes in the politics of the state. The incumbency factor on which Wike and Tinubu are riding rough shod on Rivers state is nearly over. In the next one year, Tinubu will be gasping for breadth to secure a second term in office in the face of a vicious and powerful opposition.
Even if security breaks down in the state once again, Tinubu will have lost the power to declare yet another State of Emergency in that state. Many other areas of pressing national security like the Benue-Plateau-Nasarawa axis will threaten us all with fresh urgency. A president with an uncertain political fate cannot guarantee any governorship candidate tenure security let alone decide on who enters the ballot in a state that his party does not control.
By the eve of 2027, Wike himself will have no significant foothold on power to decide on who rules Rivers State. For a politician with a feudal manorial inclination, he may need to seek alternative farmlands or just retreat to safeguard his huge treasure warehouses. His ministerial tenure will be at its tail end, surrounded, as I am sure, by a deluge of complaints, scandals and looming investigations.
On his part, Mr. Fubara will be ending his first term as a victim incumbent, a man more sinned against than sinning. He was harassed in his first term, disengaged briefly by hostile forces in a State of Emergency declared on a partisan footing and literally chased away from power by the duo of an imperial minister and an autocratic president. His adversaries will by then have little power over him. He is likely to look up and see the fading ghosts of Wike and Tinubu and ask both ghosts: “Death, where is thy power?”
The political foot soldiers that have so far powered the crisis in Rivers on all sides will be scattered in different directions as they seek new alliances and alignments. The beleaguered state legislators will literally have no mandate or any constituency as they scamper for new relevance in new partisan affiliations. There will be no governor to fight and a Wike will have nothing to offer them in return for endless and fruitless lawsuits.
Even the judiciary, for a long time serially weaponized in the Rivers crisis, will be at a loss as to whom to back and on whose side to deliver those transactional judgments. In this confusing scenario, Rivers could degenerate into a judicial anarchy and a political jungle. Somehow, true democracy as the rule of the people could prevail as today’s war lords will recede into the twilight of political irrelevance.
More importantly, the grassroot forces that determine the locus of power in Rivers will by the eve of 2027 be rehearsing for a go at the governorship. The critical divide between the upland and riverain zones will return in full force.. The Ijaws will return in full force to stage a forceful stake for their son, Fubara, who has been variously wronged and victimized. The least they will be asking for this time around is that their son be allowed to complete a second term like other citizens. They will have the power of the constitution backed by law to back their demand.
The demand for this equity will be staged forcefully through street marches by half naked women, militants armed with all sorts of dangerous implements and ill -mannered propaganda converted into war songs and dangerous slogans.
National security will meet and mix with political upheaval. Law and order will take a back seat as peace and public order take precedence as priorities of state responsibility. The federal government at this point dares not mention the word ‘emergency’ as the vocal majority In Rivers will see any federal intervention as an invasion of the powerful minority of Ijaw nationalists. Advocates of democracy, justice and fairness will scream very loud and drown other noises.
The Ijaws are by no means the only significant majority ethnicity in contention in the Rivers State governorship jostle. Outside Wike’s Ikwerre upland base which has had its fair share, the Ogonis are the next most consequential political demographics in the state. Their stake in the governorship has been long standing. Add this to their international environmental presence dating back to the Ken Saro Wiwa era. The Ogonis are on UN record as the most prominent victims of Nigeria’s abusive and mostly unregulated oil and gas industry. Key Ogoni political actors like Magnus Abe have in the recent past expressed strong interest in the governorship of Rivers state. The space that the new cease fire deal will create is likely to create space for this group to re-energize their effort.
In the midst of the 2027 power stampede, the concern of the world and indeed the nation will not be on what Tinubu and Wike want or think. The international community especially will focus on the elections and how far violence and intimidation are deployed by untidy political actors. It is democracy itself that will be on trial, not a deal of political convenience entered into by an endangered president and his besieged party and political contractor.
Yes indeed, Mr. Wike is likely to deploy his armada of cash and clubs to ensure that Fubara is finally buried politically. But Fubara will not be alone in the fight for survival. He will be joined by other powerful partisans who cannot possibly go to bed with Wike. And Wike will be in the battlefield of 2027 only to the extent of seeing how big a slice of a possible Tinubu victory he can bring into the basket. If he gets something big, he could return into federal reckoning. If not, his road to political oblivion will be paved with the debris of his untidy past glory.
The political drama that has engulfed Rivers State in the last couple of months, we come face to face with a broad spectrum of political features that should be of interest to future observers of Nigerian politics. In President Tinubu’s teleguiding of Rivers politics through the use if a sole agent, Mr. Wike, we witness a modern equivalent of the colonial Warrant Chief in national politics.
In the colonial era, the Warrant Chief was a paid agent of the colonial authority who wielded authority and controlled power at the local level on behalf of the colonial power. His authority came from the colonial power and he owed his influence to this external source. That has been the role of Mr. Wike on behalf of Tinubu and the ruling APC. Wike donned the red cap of his political master and has recklessly flaunted his illegitimate authority with reckless abandon.
At the level of Wike himself, he has demonstrated the power of the political God father as a factor in Nigeria’s democracy. This successive breed of politicians insist on choosing their successors mostly at the level of state governors. Political God Fathers insist on controlling the destiny of their surrogates especially the state finances and appointments. Wike was not just content with installing Fubara in the government house. He wanted to dictate appointments, budgets, spending limits in addition to political control of grassroots support and downstream followership.
As a political God Father, Mr. Wike was out of power as governor but wanted to retain control of the affairs of Rivers state while wielding ministerial power as FCT Minister. Things fell apart because of the incompatibility of these divergent levels of political power and authority dynamics. An overbearing minister also wanted to be the emperor of a state he previously governed with scant accountability and maximum recklessness.
On his part, Mr.Fubara was victim of a failure to understand the nature of power. He thought he could be in office, enjoy the perks of power, relish in the fanfare of state power while someone else called the shots and held the purse strings. How infantile? He failed to realize that power without authority is a mere caricature. Office without power and political control is a joke.
In an attempt to reconcile these divergent antagonisms of power in Rivers, all major contenders are riding an impossible tiger of political power and are all likely to get badly bruised. Tinubu is unlikely to determine the political outcome in Rivers in 2027.
Mr. Wike and the President are most likely to fall out and apart on the swords of their huge stakes in both Rivers State and national politics. Wike’s use value as a political contractor and Warrant Chief is fast expiring and may be completely obliterated or neutralized by 2027. The recourse to cash and brute force to stay relevant may be countered by new forces that just want a change from the old order.
As for Mr. Fubara, his future as a political factor in Rivers will depend on how deftly he moves to convert political name recognition into real power and regional influence in the Niger Delta. It is ultimately a matter of courage on his part.