A DUET OF DECEPTION IN A DEMOCRACY
Two years into the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and decades into Nigerians triumphant return to democracy, one thing is clear: the country is on a clear, clutterless road to somewhere. Only backwards.
The decision of the President to slam a state of emergency on Rivers State will surely go down as the most unpopular decision taken by this administration, and that is some prize in an administration that has stumbled from one disastrous decision to another. Redemption from blindness usually starts from the point where the blind leave bickering and bitterness and admit that they are blind. It is only at that point that braille can begin.
From the point where Siminalayi Fubara, the governor of Rivers State, disagreed with his former boss and predecessor in office, Nyesom Wike, over the direction of governance in Rivers State, the identity of the troublemaker in Rivers State has not been hidden.
Armed with the powers that the powerful office of FCT Minister in the federal government brings, Wike, who allegedly ran into trouble with Fubara over the sharing formula of Rivers State resources, had vowed to make the state ungovernable. To achieve this, he has used the Rivers State House of Assembly as a toy. They have relentlessly provoked the governor for more than a year now.
There have been a series of court actions and while the president has pretended to be a peacemaker all along, it is now clear that he has never meant to quell the crisis in the state. Declaring a state of emergency which suspends the governor for six months is yet another bone thrown to the pack of rabid dogs desperate to chew Rivers State to a pulp.
The federal government has been careful to cloth the action in the robes of “the best interest of the state and country” but Nigerians now see through such deceptive language from the government. The state of emergency is in the best interest of President Tinubu and especially Nyesom Wike.
In Nigeria, everything goes on the altar of political expediency, but it is at this point that those who wield power must be careful. This disaster of a decision irreparably punctures the masquerade of a pseudo-democrat that President Tinubu has carefully won since he assumed office. It is absolutely shocking that as president, a man who once had to leave the country because of a military regime would order the military to take over a state over a crisis orchestrated right within his government. It exposes the president for whom he truly is and offends the democracy he has supposedly defended in the past.
Dabbling into the crisis in Rivers State and showing this level of bilious bias sums up this administration which prefers to chase rats while its house is burning. In two years, it has offered laughably little by way of hope and development to Nigerians. The worst thing about it is that there is no promise whatsoever that it has anything to offer.
But Nigeria’s democracy will no longer be subverted tacitly or overtly. The sacrifices Nigerians made for their precious democracy will not be thrown away in any guise by politicians who know nothing but their paunches and pockets.
As for the so-called legislators of the Rivers State of Assembly who have conspired with political merchants in Abuja to suspend the democratically elected government of Rivers State and bring in an expired military officer who has no business with governance, they have shown themselves not only unworthy of legislative duties, but
utterly worthless at anything noble.
At a time like this, it is important for the good people of Rivers State to remember that their mandate which is home-made and home-bred should not be taken away.
Kene Obiezu,
