EDITORIAL: The Rivers Storm: Time to crush political godfatherism

Politics in Rivers State has been too mucky since October 2023, over who controls its soul. This surreal situation has spawned tumultuous occurrences, dangers to lives, and, in some instances, deaths that tend to discredit the praxis of democracy.

The chaos was triggered by the falling apart of Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his erstwhile political godfather, Nyesom Wike, less than five months after the former assumed office on 29 May, 2023. As it has been the case since 2007, many outgoing governors anoint and install their successors, largely with state resources.

This doesn’t happen without a huge cost: a governor so bred becomes a puppet, or loses his executive powers to the godfather, who decides how the state cabinet is formed; and how other crucial matters of governance are carried out – with his approval. But more often than not, the honeymoon is short-lived, as the governor begins to assert his independence. In the Wike-Fubara tango, only the duo can exactly say what is amiss between them. What is clear to all, however, is that their disagreement has split the government down the middle.

Nowhere is this animus more evident than in the State House of Assembly, with 27 of its members being acolytes of Mr Wike, who have been trying to impeach the governor since October last year. Three out of the four state legislators who are on the side of the governor, now constitute the ‘legislature,’ and they have been holding legislative sessions inside the Government House. In the cabinet, not less than five pro-Wike commissioners have resigned, been reinstated, before resigning again; just as the 27 belligerent lawmakers elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), have defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Last year, a presidential intervention temporarily secured the peace of the grave yard.

Wike has accused the governor of attempting to tamper with the political structure he erected, which brought the governor into office. Again, he said, “You cannot work and people will begin to fight and bring (in) enemies; those who fought you when you were struggling for the person to be in office. Nobody does that.” This can hardly be an altruistic and justifiable reason for the 27 lawmakers to have initiated an impeachment proceeding against the governor.

Ahead of the consummation of the plot then, the legislative complex, which was venue of their sittings, was mysteriously bombed. Observers attributed that bizarre incident to the executive arm of government, which had allegedly acted pre-emptively over the bid to sack the governor. Subsequently, the building was bulldozed and the governor approved N19.6 billion for its reconstruction last month. This is a colossal waste of public funds that should have been better deployed towards the provision of social services to the people. On Tuesday last week, an improvised explosive device (IED) that almost reduced the state owned five-star, Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt, was freakishly set off.

Members of the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, who were on a visit to Port Harcourt, were lodged in the hotel. It is quite scary contemplating what Governor Fubara allegedly told the lawmakers, that the idea behind the bombing that missed the target was to create grounds for the National Assembly to declare a state of emergency in the state. This would have eased him out of power while it lasted.

One of the issues in the power struggle between the governor and his alienated godfather was the expected continuation in office of chairpersons of local government areas, whose tenures had expired on 17 June, after three-year electoral mandates. The 27 pro-Wike lawmakers had extended the tenure of these LGAs helmsmen by six months, amid the non-conduct of local council polls, while the governor appointed caretaker chairpersons to oversee the councils pending fresh elections. Both the extended tenures and caretaker appointments are alien to the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

Rivers State’s noxious fumes are not exactly new in our democratic practice. In Anambra, Lagos, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Abia, Zamfara, Enugu, Kano, Sokoto and Delta states, imprints of godfatherism in gubernatorial successions in this Fourth Republic are pretty much in evidence. In some cases, the tussles have ultimately reduced the godfathers to political turncoats. But its expansiveness or corrosive effect in the oil-rich Rivers State is now enough reason to instigate a national conversation on how to defang it before it causes incurable damage to this democracy.

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In retrospect, the First and Second Republics had Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ahmadu Bello and Obafemi Awolowo as political godfathers. They were leaders who had visions and missions, with a coterie of protégés who later held the banners of their parties and ideologies loftily. Not this notorious dimension that it has taken, which incubates impunity and destroys democratic filaments, as encapsulated in internal party democracy, inclusivity in decision-making, and the rule of law.

After 24 years of unbroken democratic rule, despite its frailties, the ownership of political parties and their structures should not be allowed to turn to fiefdoms, no matter how strong they may be. Therefore, PREMIUM TIMES advocates a well-structured legal framework that forestalls the hijacking or appropriation of political parties, even by a president, governors, or powerful individual members. As elections in the US and UK always exemplify, the emergence of party flag-bearers is a members-driven recruitment process. When dictators or emperors, masquerading as democrats, snatch the process here without resistance, it puts democracy to the sword.

This monstrosity took firm roots in 2007 in the country, when presidential front runners for the PDP ticket, as Ken Nnamani, a former president of the Senate, put it in his book, were “hounded out of the way or convinced to withdraw” by the powers that be, for the “anointed” late Umaru Yar’Adua to emerge as the PDP candidate. Many governors, who were serving out their terms followed suit in relation to their successors.

Unfortunately, President Muhammadu Buhari equally sought to embrace this malevolent culture, with his reminder to the APC governors in May 2022 that it was a payback time as he had given them “the privilege of promoting (choosing) their successors.” Therefore, “I wish to solicit the reciprocity and support of the governors and other stakeholders in picking my successor who would fly the flag of our party for election into the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023.” But he was ultimately outfoxed by Mr Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

A sustainable democracy is wishful thinking if it is allowed to remain within the grip of centrifugal elements at whatever level in the country. It is the height of democratic absurdity. Therefore, the festering sore of Rivers State politics should not be allowed to continue by all its stakeholders.