It was Czar Nicholas 1 of Russia who, in 1853, described the crumbling Ottoman Empire as the “sick man of Europe” and suggested that Russia and England do something drastic about it. Last Tuesday, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu did something similar. He decided that the political crisis in Rivers State had gone on for too long and it was time to do end it before it got worse. His idea of healing the “sick man” was to make him sicker still by temporarily disabling his two legs.
Rivers’s sickness is a problem between two top politicians, one a sitting governor and the other the immediate past governor who would not accept his time was past. Nyesom Wike was out of the seat of governor in 2023 because his tenure was, yet he wanted to hold onto power. To the unwary public Siminalayi Fubara was the governor but it would be Wike calling the shots out of sight. Of course, Fubara didn’t want to play Esau; he wanted to be his own man, not another’s tool. That was the beginning of their trouble. Out of power but he still managed to get incoming President Bola Tinubu to appoint him as the Minister of Abuja – apparently a reward for ‘helping’ the new president obtain chunky votes in Rivers, though not a stronghold of Tinubu’s All Progressive Congress (APC) party. With Abuja as war chest Wike took on Fubara, his former political protege, in a battle to the death.
Tinubu failed to hear the voice of Jacob in the sickness of Rivers when last Tuesday he declared a state of emergency in the state, suspended Gov. Fubara, his deputy governor and state lawmakers for six months in the first instance. He said the situation there had been mismanaged so badly that he had to act as President to restore normalcy. By and large, he accused the governor of “gross constitutional breaches and disregard for rule of law.” He cited as one of the breaches the December 13 2023 burning of a section of the legislative building complex and the failure of the governor and the lawmakers to work together for the good of the “good people of Rivers State.” Not once did the President mention Wike, ignoring the glaring fact that it was Wike that got 27 lawmakers to work against Fubara, including their physically stopping the governor from presenting the state’s budget to them. By refusing to mention his Abuja minister as the major hand that stirred the broth, Tinubu made his first blunder.
The second was his misreading of provisions of Section 305 of the 1999 federal Constitution. According to him, it had become “inevitably compelling” to invoke that section of the Constitution to “declare a state of emergency in Rivers State with effect from today, 18th March, 2025 and I so do.” In doing so, he right away appointed a sole administrator for the state. He is a retired military officer. Yes, under that section, the Constitution gives the president the “prerogative” (special power or privilege) to declare a state of emergency in any part of the country but under “strict conditions” including widespread insecurity, insurrection or total collapse of public peace and order. Profound natural disaster is another. It defines what the president could do in the circumstance but that doesn’t include the removal of an elected governor and his deputy as well as elected lawmakers. The removal of such officers of state is spelt out in Section 188 of the Constitution. It says a state governor can only be removed from office if properly impeached by a majority of the state’s lawmakers or he is incapacitated by an incurable disease or he willingly resigns his position. Other than the legislature nobody else, not even Mr. President, can remove a governor from office.
This is also the position of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). It said in a statement Wednesday, “A declaration of state of emergency does not automatically dissolve or suspend elected state governments. The Constitution does not empower the President to unilaterally remove or replace elected officials. Such actions amount to an unconstitutional usurpation of power and a fundamental breach of Nigeria’s federal structure.” By implication, the President has committed an impeachable offence. Besides, Tinubu overreached himself when he said the state of emergency took effect the very day he announced it. The correct procedure was for the National Assembly to endorse it first, by a majority vote. This could take between two and ten days as the Constitution says. Thirdly, it is wrong of the President to ask the Federal Executive Council of ministers of which he is chairman and Wike a member to make laws for Rivers State. They are not elected representatives of the state, so have no say in how it is governed.
Tinubu and his legal team could argue that what he has done has precedents. Again, true. President Olusegun Obasanjo did so in 2004 in Plateau and Ekiti States and Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 in Borno and Adamawa States. But precedents done ill-advisedly do not make what has happened in Rivers right. And what is worse, appointing a former soldier to administer state in a democratic civilian dispensation isn’t only a contradiction but an unfortunate admission that the military does things better. Now a huge blunder has been made at the highest level, lamentably. But the National Assembly has the power to make it right by rejecting Tinubu’s bad decision and restoring constitutionality in Rivers.
P/S
I had already delivered this piece to my Editor when a report came through that parliamentarians had swallowed the declaration of state of emergency hook, line and sinker in a voice vote taken Thursday, effectively killing an opportunity to right a fundamental constitutional wrong. Or so it appeared. But not so really. The courts offer another window. Let defenders of constitutionality “seize the day.”
