A little over a month after President Bola Tinubu placed Rivers State under emergency rule and appointed an administrator, Nigerians have continued to call for the restoration of democratic governance in the oil-rich state.
Recall that the president had, on 18th March 2025, declared a state of emergency in Rivers State, suspending Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and all elected members of the Rivers State House of Assembly for an initial period of six months following political turmoil resulting from a disagreement between the governor and the lawmakers.
Speaking during a radio programme, PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development, PRIMORG, on Wednesday in Abuja, development lawyer and the Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy For Social & Economic Rights, Frank Tietie, called on Tinubu to immediately reverse his decisions by sacking the Rivers State Sole Administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (Rtd) and reinstating democratically elected officials.
Tietie, despite alluding that the presidential powers guaranteed Tinubu the right to declare a state of emergency, maintained that the case of Rivers State was largely political and linked to the feud between former Governor Nyesom Wike and his successor.
He stressed that President Tinubu could have handled the Rivers political crisis better than ousting a democratically elected government and replacing them with former military personnel, noting that he (Tinubu) has proceeded on the path of error.
The legal practitioner also lampooned the National Assembly for swiftly endorsing emergency rule in Rivers State, describing their actions as a huge aberration and embarrassment, especially for ratifying the suspension of democratically elected government through a voice vote.
“The first thing President Tinub should do is to make a 360-degree turnaround in Rivers State and sack the sole administrator immediately.
“When you declare a state of democracy, the constitution does not in any way contemplate that you should suspend the governor. Who are you in this country as an individual? What powers have you to suspend an elected House of Assembly and an elected governor?
“The president should immediately reverse all of those actions and apologize and then tell Nigerians that he is on a new path to ensure the tenets of democracy will be respected in Nigeria.
Tietie dismissed the expectations of the judiciary and the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) helping to address the rule of law crisis undermining democracy and development of the country, saying, “the NBA is becoming unnecessarily political, while the judiciary is fast losing grounds in terms of credibility because of the conflicting judgments and lots of issues. Nobody can give what he does not have – the judiciary does not have the solution to the current problems in Nigeria.
“So much power is given to the Nigerian President; he has to have goodwill, good intentions, and the best interests of this country, and he has to act accordingly. If he decides to be subversive to the basic laws of this country, then he becomes an agent of retrogression,” Tietie warned.
On his part, Public Affairs and Political Analyst Jaye Gaskia faulted the declaration of emergency rule in Rivers and the appointment of Vice Admiral Ibas (Retired).
Gaskia disclosed that the biggest challenge to rule of law adherence in Nigeria is the impunity of political actors, adding that no amount of change in the current constitution or reforms will resolve the rule of law crisis in Nigeria given the present crop of leaders.
“On Rivers issue, even by the name ‘Sole Administrator,’ it already encompasses everything that is not the law because you are saying the entire administration lies on one person. The moment you are talking about a sole administration, you are saying that the other institutions and arms of government are redundant, and I think we need to challenge that.
“The biggest challenge for us concerning the rule of law has been more at the level of what I will call the impunity of political actors because essentially leadership in a society is first and foremost political and then economic and then social,” Gaskia lamented.
While aligning with calls for Tinubu to reverse the emergency rule in Rivers state, Gaskia advocated for citizens’ activism as a way of life. He tasked citizens to wake up and organize themselves to push leaders toward getting things right.
“I think citizens need to wake up and start organizing collectively again. We are going to organize differently, but let us start organizing; in the contestation of those organizing, we are going to arrive at what’s good for us, but we have to start organizing, and we have to start challenging what we think is bad for us,” he advised.
Meanwhile, there are some indications that the suspended Governor Fubara may likely make concessions to ease the political tension in the state. The development follows Fubara’s meeting with President Tinubu in London during the latter’s 18-day retreat in Europe.
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio program, PRIMORG, that draws the government’s and citizens’ attention to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
The program runs in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation.