Before the reported presidential intervention on Saturday, the intractable imbroglio between the embattled Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, and his godfather-cum-predecessor, the maverick Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, had slipped into an anticlimax last Thursday with the impeachment move initiated by the state House of Assembly against the latter.
Watchers of the wrangle between the two and the high-stakes politicking that has been shaping the trajectory may not be altogether surprised at the extreme option, the second attempt, that Wike had taken against Fubara.
However, news filtered in on Saturday that President Bola Tinubu had intervened to halt the impeachment move after all. The facts about the presidential intervention were sketchy by press time, but Tinubu, who is currently out of the country, was said to have summoned Wike to discuss his renewed offensive against Fubara.
The governor might also have been invited to be part of the parley, as he reportedly jetted out to France last Thursday. How the president will resolve the knotty issue remains to be seen.
Both the governor and FCT minister are ostensibly fighting for their political survival, but Wike’s own game is steeped in rabid desperation, shaped by hubris of power and subterranean political manoeuvres that have boxed him into a sort of cul-de-sac.
The feud is rooted in a succession plan turned awry. Wike, in the twilight of his second term as Rivers State governor in 2023, had picked Fubara, then the state Accountant-General, and pulled all the stops, including saving him from the dragnet of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operatives, who were hunting him over some of the state’s allegedly questionable expenditures, to install him as his successor.
Wike had obviously wanted a pliable, servile personality he could control. But power is rather an unpredictable force that is as fluid as an eel; it is difficult to remote-control once its lever is handed over. Hence, emboldened and coarsened by the antics of some of Wike’s political foes in Rivers, who were intent on extracting a pound of flesh, Fubara, not long after taking power, demurred and wanted to be his own man.
Disagreements soon erupted between them over appointments into Fubara’s cabinet, the control of political structures and access to state resources. These disagreements escalated. Things fell apart and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the ruling party in the state, became fractured into rival camps.
The state became a theater of confrontations. Governance became upended, to the extent that the governor had to work with just four lawmakers at a point. A truce brokered by President Tinubu then could only achieve a hiatus for a brief moment.
Wike, a deft politician, who has a mercurial temperament and bohemian traits, eventually resolved to shove his recalcitrant godson off power through an impeachment process. That should simply have been a doddle for him because he controls the state legislature, having also installed most of its members. But President Tinubu saved the day for Fubara with the controversial but politically adroit six-month state of emergency he clamped on the state.
The disagreements continued even post-emergency rule, as Wike alleged that Fubara had failed to honour past agreements. The needless fight had featured a lot of exchange of infantile britbats, tantrums and vitriols from both camps.
Fubara’s next big move is his defection to the ruling All Progressive Congress(APC), which completely jolted Wike because he was caught unaware. And that is the crux of the escalation of his renewed standoff with the governor.
For Fubara, the orchestrated defection was supposed to be a calculated political survival, but it did not quite completely insulate him from the stranglehold of his overbearing godfather. The silhouette of the bitter fight still trails him to the APC and it has escalated from being an internal Rivers State PDP tiff into a national spectacle.
Wike is intensely incensed at Fubara’s defection. It is, indeed, a pill too corrosive for him to swallow because by APC’s settled rules, the governor is automatically the leader of the party in the state. Secondly,the party leadership has also resolved to grant all governors who defect from other parties automatic return tickets.
With these twin- polices, the odds are in favour of Fubara now as an APC governor. First, Wike is not officially an APC member and political analysts believe he cannot join APC until after 2027 election because he has an “unfinished business” with the PDP.
So, he cannot stop Fubara from clinching a second term ticket since Rivers State APC structures, including the leadership of the party in the state, are now under his(the governor’s) beck and call.
Besides, the national leadership of APC, who will conduct the governorship primaries will naturally defer to Fubara. And some powerful people in the national APC, who have an axe to grind with Wike, are strongly behind the governor.
As a matter of fact, the party’s national secretary, Ajibola Basiru, led a delegation to Port Harcourt and publicly endorsed Fubara for a second term. Days later, the APC national chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, went further to declare Fubara the leader of the party in Rivers State.
Wike has no role at all in what happens in APC in the state. Head or tail, the defection is a plus for Fubara but it is hideous for the FCT minister. And this is precisely what is shaping the second phase of his feud with the governor because he does not want him to smell a second term. He was said to have once reasoned that it(Fubara’s second term) would “kill” him (Wike) politically.
Retaining his overbearing political influence in Rivers State, including trammeling Fubara, is his last straw because PDP, as an opposition party, is fast petering out and as a factional leader of PDP, Wike’s stead in the party is caving in under his feet, especially because of his intractable altercations with the party’s leading lights like Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, and his Bauchi counterpart, Bala Mohammed.
This is why Wike had to go for broke. Succinctly put, by his permutations, impeachment is about the only way for him to stop Fubara and his advantages over him. And he has the weapon to achieve it— he controls majority in the state legislature. For him, it is a Machiavelli style; the end justifies the means!
For the APC and President Tinubu, Wike, Fubara imbroglio’s dilemma is more daunting. It is quite a precipitous situation. It is a big albatross for a party, which did not start a fight but has been saddled with managing it.
Now, will the party sacrifice Fubara to please Wike, an ally that has played a big role in significantly whittling the octopus of an opposition party, PDP? A stroppy character, who analysts say is better managed as a friend and an ally than contended with as a political foe? People like Rotimi Amaechi and Atiku Abubakar are some of Wike’s “victims” in this respect.
If APC exempts Fubara from the twin-policies of making a defecting governor the leader of the party and automatical second term ticket just to mollify Wike, what becomes of institutional precedence and integrity?
The stakes are higher for President Tinubu because he will be the ultimate loser if Fubara is impeached or he loses Wike’s support. The president is desperate to have Fubara’s support because he desires to win big in Rivers State in 2027.
Apart from being an incumbent of a major oil-producing state who controls humongous resources with which he can dispense patronage and build solid political structures, Fubara has the solid support base with the grassroots.
Besides, most of Rivers influential and experienced politicians who are Wike’s political foes, will naturally back Tinubu because of the governor. At the same time, the president does not want to lose Wike because he is a deft, fearless political ‘Trojan horse’ who could be fiercely loyal and an electoral asset.
It is, indeed, a dicey, knotty issue. Untying the knot will definitely task Tinubu’s famed political sagacity. Stakeholders are on tenterhooks to see how he manoeuvres the labyrinth to successfully thaw both sides.
Of course, the first casualty of the presidential intervention should be the impeachment move against Fubara. It is needless at this time. We agree with the Rivers State Elders’ position that the impeachment will worsen the precarious political fractures in the state.
Like some analysts have canvassed, a political solution must just be found to the impasse. Fubara must stoop to conquer, come to the table with all penitence and stop the scurrilous shots at his political mentor, who braced all odds to install him as governor.
Wike himself must don the garb of a statesman because he is not getting younger. Heaven will not fall if Fubara wins a second term under a convivial arrangement that accommodates him (Wike) and in which the governor defers to his mentor. Let both combatants shield their swords, cooperate with Mr President and give peace a chance. After all, win some, lose some is the verity of life.
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