CRYING MORE THAN THE BEREAVED

President Bola Tinubu’s intervention in the Rivers State crisis was essentially a political rather than legal resolution of a political issue, writes Bolaji Adebiyi

President Bola Tinubu has come under searing attacks since the outcome of his intervention in the political crisis in Rivers State became public on Tuesday. It didn’t matter that his traducers were among the legion of leaders of thought and social analysts, who had urged him to bring the warring parties to the negotiation table.

The president had held a meeting on Monday night with Siminalayi Fubara, the state governor, and his estranged predecessor and godfather, Nyesom Wike, who is also the minister of Federal Capital Territory, in the presence of Nuhu Ribadu, national security adviser, Femi Gbajabiamila, presidential chief of staff, and Peter Odili, a former governor of the state, among others to resolve the logjam in the oil-rich state.

Briefly, the eight-point resolution enjoined the warring parties to discontinue suits pending in the courts, and more or less, revert to the status quo ante belum. The 27, or is it 25, lawmakers, who had defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress, and whose seats had been deemed vacant, were to return to the House of Assembly; the governor was to represent his 2024 spending estimates to them; and the 10 commissioners, who resigned their appointments due to the crisis were to be recalled. In return for all these, the noose around Fubara’s neck was to be loosened. All parties signed the resolutions with the NSA also appending his signature, perhaps as a witness and guarantor.

On the face of it, the resolutions were skewed against Fubara and looked difficult to sell not only to his supporters back home but also to the public which, seeing him as the underdog had pitched their tent with him. It was not long before the torrent of criticisms came, principally from the usual quarters of habitual critics of constituted authority, especially, the central government. Incidentally, the president, whose signature was not on the resolution, has drawn the most flak.

“From all that transpired at the meeting,” an angry Edwin Clark, former minister of Information and Ijaw ethnic leader, said at a press conference on Tuesday, “the laws of the land have not been obeyed,” adding, “President Tinubu simply sat over a meeting where the constitution, which is the fulcrum of his office as President and which he swore to uphold and abide by, was truncated and desecrated.”

He fired on: “The eight resolutions reached, are the most unconstitutional, absurd, and obnoxious resolutions at settling feuding parties that I have ever witnessed in my life. Some media captured it very well when they described it as directives.”

More adversarial conferences and statements were to follow, including the one by a group of elders in the state, led by Rufus Ada-George, a former governor; and the Ijaw National Congress as well as learned silk, Femi Falana, who more or less dismissed the presidential intervention as meddlesome.

Ironically, Fubara, on behalf of whom the critics were agitating, would pour cold water on their fire. “I thank all of you for the love and support from Rivers people. And I want to say that no amount is too big for peace. I will continue to pay for it,” he said, almost tearfully at the third convocation and sixth Founders Day ceremonies of the PAMO University of Medical Sciences in Iriebe Town in the Obio-Akpor Local Government Area of the state.

His emotional statement, which betrayed the pain he was going through would be given meaning by Ajuri Ngelale, the presidential spokesman, who also hinted at the difficulties in reaching the much-assailed resolutions.  “There was a compromise involved. All sides of the political divide within that state have had to compromise to ensure that there is a fair resolution,” he told a national television network on Wednesday night.

The public angst is understandable. Not privy to the circumstances of the resolutions, which as Clark correctly said, practically suspended certain provisions of the 1999 Constitution as altered, and more or less sat as an appeal over subsisting court rulings, it is not difficult to appreciate the opposition to the Abuja settlement.

However, if pains had been taken by the peacemakers to explain to the public the basis of the settlement, perhaps the president would have been saved from the bashings that he got. The fact of the matter is that what occurred at the presidential villa was an attempt at the resolution of a complicated political issue complicated by law. It must have been obvious to the peacemakers that since the dispute arose from politics the way out was a political resolution because a strict application of the law would only further complicate the matter.

The political option became more obvious with the usual resort to the procurement of conflicting court orders by both sides of the divide, which threatened to institute anarchy. This was why it became necessary for the matters to be pulled out of the courts while the disputants met themselves halfway with the president issuing guarantees of compliance by all sides.

Could the political resolution have been better managed without a public feeling of a breach of the Constitution and the law? Definitely, yes. The president’s first intervention attempted this. He had advised better political management of the dispute, advising the godfather to accord the governor respect as he had taken responsibilities for which he would be held to account. The latter was also admonished to give the godfather his due as his promoter.

It was the failure to recognise this dividing line that led to the breakdown of the first presidential intervention. It has to be understood that the seat of the government of Rivers State is in Port Harcourt, not Abuja. So, whether the much-vilified eight-point resolution succeeds will depend on this realisation, particularly as the settlement is seen as an agreement of imperfect obligations, which can only perpetuate tension in a polity that is increasingly becoming polarised by ethnicity.

Adebiyi, executive editor of Western Post, is a member of the Editorial Board of THISDAY Newspapers