Barring any last minute hitches, Amaopusenibo Siminalayi Fubara will be back to office as the Governor of Rivers State after enduring his six months “suspension” by President Bola Tinubu. He will not be the same confident, belligerent and defiant rebel who walked away from the Brick House, Port Harcourt on March 18, 2025. The Tinubu/Wike rain has beaten him silly, and his starch has washed off. The “federal might” has happened to him.
Fubara was the Accountant General of Rivers State under former Governor Nyesom Wike. He was considered the most loyal among Wike’s political disciples from the riverine geopolitical section to sit at the Brick House for Wike. Wike, a professional politician, wanted to become the godfather of Rivers. Obviously, Tinubu, the most successful and entrenched political godfather in Nigeria’s history, is his role model in this aspiration.
Initially, Fubara was willing to play. But Wike’s godfather ambition rankled with the generality of the Rivers people, political elite and Nigerians. Three former governors – Dr Peter Odili, Chibuike Amaechi and Wike, all from the Igbo-speaking “upland” geopolitical zone, enjoyed their respective eight-year tenures with absolute freehand. Indeed, each of them was so imperially dominant that they squandered billions of Rivers people’s money on their failed presidential aspirations. Fubara’s emergence from the Ijaw ethnic basket represented what most Nigerians saw as a deserved power shift to give the “riverine” people their due. In this, Fubara had widespread public support.
Ordinarily, Wike would never have dared Fubara. Because of the money and power at a governor’s disposal, no predecessor ever dared a sitting Rivers State Governor. Most members of the Rivers elite depend on the good graces of a sitting governor to thrive. The chiefs, elites, youths, women and roughnecks automatically flock to the side of a sitting governor. A Rivers sitting governor will destroy you without thinking twice if you “cross” him. Sitting governors routinely demolish people’s properties whimsically.
What makes the difference for Wike is that he played “smart” at the very tail end of his tenure, and “supported” Tinubu in the 2023 presidential election in Rivers. He also had four Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, rebel governors – Samuel Ortom (Benue); Seyi Makinde (Oyo); Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu) and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia) tagging around him in his avowed mission to destroy the PDP after his failed presidential bid. Tinubu, ever the farsighted, shrewd political speculator, reasoned that having Wike on his side would help him achieve multiple objectives beyond just “winning” the presidential election of 2023.
One was the final destruction of the PDP, the once impregnable ruling behemoth. Even after being dethroned in 2015 after its 16-year rule, the PDP still scared the All Progressives Congress, APC, in 2019 when the late Muhammadu Buhari ran for a second term. If Atiku Abubakar had been allowed to claim his widely perceived victory, PDP would have scuppered Tinubu’s presidential ambition. Had Buhari not used the military, police and security to hijack the election and get it validated by a Supreme Court Electoral Petition Tribunal, there would be no “President Tinubu” today.
So, Tinubu continues to see the extinction of the PDP as a strategic mission he must accomplish to fully dominate. Wike has become a very valuable tool in that enterprise. To crown it all, Wike is helping Tinubu to infrastructurally upgrade Abuja. Wike is one of the Ministers who Tinubu has openly heaped praises on in public events.
The most important use that Tinubu has for Wike is the capture of Rivers State. Since 1999, Rivers State has remained unshakably a PDP state. Even when Amaechi, who was elected on the PDP platform, tried to drag it into the APC in 2015, he failed woefully. Wike, his estranged former Chief of Staff, defeated Amaechi’s candidate, despite that PDP lost the presidency. While the fight between Governor Fubara and Wike lasted, the contest was for the control of PDP and government of Rivers. The APC was, as usual, a mere bystander. But after Fubara’s suspension and humiliation which robbed him of his exclusive power over his “red biro”, he is returning to office with the APC effectively in charge of the grassroots. He is now not only a puppet but a lame duck as well. After the recent kangaroo local government election conducted by a Rivers State Independent Electoral Committed headed by Tinubu’s lackey, Michael Odey from Cross River (the home state of the Sole Administrator, Ekwe Ibas), the state has been handed over to Tinubu’s party.
It is widely expected that Fubara will be replaced in 2027 by an APC governor. He is just being used to tide over the period between now and then to calm the people. It is also widely expected that by 2027, Wike will have concluded his transition into APC. He most likely will go to the Senate. But will he ever achieve his ambition of being the godfather of Rivers State? I seriously doubt it, and I have my reasons.
Tinubu has successfully used Wike and the Rivers political crisis to pocket Rivers State. He now has the two richest states in Nigeria – Lagos and Rivers – to himself. The next APC governor who will be installed in 2027 will not be a Wike loyalist. He or she will likely be an original Tinubu trusted ally. Wike may be allowed to suggest, but he will not handpick. Whether he knows it or not, Wike has not only sold Rivers State to Tinubu, he has also sold his godfather ambition to the Jagaban Borgu. He had better remain a good boy, or he will not know what hit him!
Rivers State has been sold, signed and delivered.
The post Rivers: One governor, two godfathers, by Ochereome Nnanna appeared first on Vanguard News.
