Siminalayi Fubara, the Governor of Rivers State, is poised to return to office tomorrow after the six months of imposed emergency rule by President Bola Tinubu lapses. Mr. Fubara has undergone the human equivalent of what technology experts call device reset. In the case of the governor, he seems to have experienced a brain reset.
He is back now to the ‘factory setting’, the condition he was before he chose to exhibit the rebellious streak that brought the flaming sword to the gates of Eden, sending Adam and Eve out of that garden of eternal bliss. This is unlike her counterpart in the suspension class, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the senator representing Kogi Central in the National Assembly. Her return has been mired in renewed controversies. Of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, both Sim and Natasha had been suspended within two weeks of each other, respectively on March 6 and 18.
Before her suspension, Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan had enjoyed parliamentary privileges, first as the chair of the Local Content Committee, a position way above her status as a first term legislator, and later as chair of the Diaspora and NGOs Committee from which she was removed in July. But she had a cozy relationship with the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, with whose family she was also friendly. Things went south between them after familiarity had apparently bred contempt. Then the senator mistook her role as chair of the local content committee for that of content creation and thus went on a dramatic voyage that is proving politically costly. She entertained her audience, both local and international, with a performance repertoire that showcased her talent as a drama queen of the highest order.
A feud that started with disagreement over seating arrangements in the Senate chamber, ended with yet-unproven accusations of unwanted sexual overtures before spiraling into a fierce legal challenge that has since gone to an appellate court. Natasha’s six months suspension for misconduct was to have ended on September 4. She wrote the Senate with typically dramatic flourish to announce her impending resumption, a grand entry no less. She was slapped with a response from the clerk that conveyed the Senate’s position, namely: that until all legal issues between her and the Senate were over and done with, she was not expected anywhere in the vicinity of the legislative body.
Her attempt to return to the Senate following the resolution of her suit before Justice Binta Nyako had been thwarted by the Senate in July. None of the reliefs she sought from that court was granted, but speaking from both sides of her mouth, she had interpreted the Justice’s ruling in a convoluted manner that favoured her. Without purging herself of the demands of the contempt charge the court imposed on her, namely to tender an apology in three national newspapers, her Facebook page, and pay N5 million, she sensationally tried to force her way back to the Senate, egged on by a motley crowd of genuine and probably rented supporters, before she was stopped. Unlike her, however, Fubara’s resumption to office tomorrow seems assured. Both Fubara and his one-time estranged godfather, Nyesom Wike, are back as friends.
The Rivers State government under the leadership of the outgoing Sole Administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, organised a thanksgiving service to commemorate the return to elective governance. There should not have been any disagreement between Wike and Fubara in the first place. Fubara was a product of the prebendal politics that has produced many politicians who relied on political godfathers to find their way around politically. Without a Wike, there could not have been a Fubara. He was Rivers State’s Accountant-General in the last two years of Wike’s reign as governor. He was a technocrat whose loyalty to Wike had earned him enough of his master’s trust to have propelled him up into taking over as his successor. Otherwise, Fubara had no pathway of his own to becoming governor. He rode on Wike’s back to political fame.
He could have been enjoying the fruit of his subservience for a much longer time had Wike’s trust in him not come under question. This was itself proof, if nothing else, of Fubara’s lack of experience as a politician. Rather than wait for an opportune moment before trying to strike out on his own, he engaged in a shameful display of immaturity and impatience barely three months after becoming governor. He showed his hand much too soon unlike, say, Theodore Orji, another technocrat plucked from relative obscurity, who spent his first four years in office playing the fool before running his godfather, Orji Uzor Kalu and his mother, out of town as a cub lion does his father, and thereafter took over as the power house of Abia State politics.
Fubara made a grievous error. Deceived by hungry courtiers and influence peddlers, mostly opposition elements, who had opposed his emergence as Wike’s pick for governor, Fubara bit the fingers that had with impunity fed him at the expense of others. He ought to have known better than acting the way he did. Wike had put him on a pedestal that placed him higher than more worthy competitors but he turned too soon on him in an attempt to outshine his master. Checkmated, he chose to double down on his error rather than beat a tactical retreat. He strove to destroy the local government structure that had secured him victory as governor and demolished the State House of Assembly in December 2023. He sacked 27 of 30 legislators and governed with only three.
He effectively ran a one-man state dictatorship until the Supreme Court stopped him in his track in February 2025. With the path clear for his impeachment, tension escalated, followed by threats of and actual use of violence, marked by explosion of pipelines. It was in these circumstances that the president declared emergency rule in the state. By May 2025, Fubara was a tired man, declaring that his mind had left the office of governor.
He has since been reconciled with his former principal on terms that have obviously left him subdued and hopefully mature. These are moments of political (re)awakening for both Fubara and Natasha. They sowed the wind only to reap the whirlwind. They chewed far more sour grapes than they could adequately swallow and now their teeth have not only been set on edge, their bellies are also swollen. They growl like constipated giants. While Fubara is content to eat the humble pie, the fear of losing face is constraining Natasha from doing the same. She is a scorched snake, writhing but waiting…
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