Ahmed Bola Tinubu is no Egeon of Syracuse whose error leads to his near execution or the Duke of Ephesus, the other major character in Shakespeare’s play “Comedy of Errors”. Their blunders provide the force majeure of the play. Tinubu, like them, has committed an error, indeed, his second, in his handling of the political crisis in Rivers State.
An online news report I read during the week, if true, revealed the president to be totally mistaken in his reading of the problem of governance in Rivers State. According to the report, Tinubu told Siminalayi Fubara, the governor of Rivers whom he wrongfully removed last February, that he would reinstate him in office if he promised to not run for governor again in 2027. The meeting between the president and Fubara, the report says, took place last Thursday night at the Presidential Villa, Tinubu’s official residence. Also in attendance was Nyesom Wike, a former Rivers governor and Tinubu’s minister in charge of Abuja. He it was that lit the fire that consumed Fubara, politically that is. We have been told that the closed-door meeting was an attempt at arriving at “a broad peace deal”. Getting Fubara to commit to not running for governor again was part of it, according to a Presidency source. “The arrangement is clear: no second term, no local government control, and peace will return,” he said. Another source said Fubara also agreed to pay the outstanding allowances and entitlements owed to the 27 lawmakers loyal to Wike, who earlier had been suspended by the state’s house of assembly. In return, the lawmakers promised they would not try to impeach Fubara when he returns to office.
The source believed the biggest gainer from the “peace deal” was Wike, who now has been given “political leverage” that gives him control over Rivers’ 23 local government areas. “Wike is the real winner here. By controlling the local government chairmen, he retains significant influence over the state’s political machinery, which will be crucial for 2027,” the source added. “The president made it clear that Rivers cannot afford a prolonged crisis. The deal is about restoring calm, but it comes at a steep cost for Fubara.”
The former governor, on his own part, did confirm he held a night meeting with Tinubu on how to restore constitutionality in Rivers. He spoke with journalists afterwards: “For me, it’s very important that this day has come. What we need for the progress of Rivers State is peace, and by the special grace of God, this night, with the help of Mr. President and leaders of the state, peace has returned to the state.” He promised that his administration would “do everything possible” to sustain the peace and prevent a return to the chaos that had plagued the state in recent months. It is interesting that Fubara said nothing about staying out of the 2027 contest as a condition for returning to office. Did he give it or not? Was his silence an indication that he had his misgivings about that part of the peace deal? But then he promised to “do everything possible” for the sake of peace. Does everything include giving up power after just one term? Hard to say but let’s give the Presidency sources who let us in on the deal the benefit of doubt. If that was the case, which we hope it was, Tinubu would have made his second error about Rivers in just under four months.
We recall his first was the removal of Fubara as governor, followed by imposition of emergency rule in Rivers back in February. That was a constitutional breach for which he was liable for impeachment. Yes, the constitution empowers him to declare an emergency in any part of the country where the situation demands it but it doesn’t also say he can remove an elected governor. Yet the National Assembly, which should have known better, went ahead to approve Tinubu’s action. An action which was again unconditional because it was taken over and above the head of parliamentarians whose stamp should have been sought first. Now this second is a worse misreading of the groundnorm. Tinubu has asked Fubara to forsake a second term second. That is saying he should renounce his constitutional right, as a Nigerian, to seek an elective office. This right cannot be taken away excerpt by a proper court of law for conviction for a criminal offence. Fubara has no known criminal record and so he wasn’t barred from running for governor in 2023 and cannot be stopped in 2027. He was right not to have said anything about the deal with the president after he emerged from that midnight Presidential Villa meeting. Suppose he did commit verbally to not running again in 2027, that agreement was not binding. He could change his mind and he should.
What then should we read into this so called Rivers peace pact? Why but President Tinubu’s desperation to be returned to the Villa in 2027. And he reasoned, wrongly, that with Fubara still as governor, he would lose Rivers and a significant millions of votes, which was what Wike delivered to him in 2023. Wrong. With or without Fubara, Tinubu may well already have lost Rivers because the political dungeon his action had thrown the state into. Everybody, including those the President thought he was pleasing, excerpt perhaps Wike, is hurting. And without Rivers and the certainty of the North not giving him the vote again, Tinubu is a loser. So unlike Egeon in “Comedy of Errors” who manages to escape the hangman’s noose, a Tinubu in 2027 is a goner.
