Expose oil thieves in your domains, Fubara tells Rivers monarchs

The Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, has said it is the duty of everybody, especially traditional rulers, to join efforts with the government to ensure stability and progress of the country.

He also advised traditional rulers to take charge of their domains and ensure ill-guided youths involved in acts of economic sabotage are ejected from the domains.

The governor gave the charge while declaring open the 117th/118th Combined Quarterly General Meeting of Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers, at their Secretariat in Port Harcourt, on Monday.

This was contained in a statement issued by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Nelson Chukwudi.

Fubara said everyone should support Nigeria to advance economically, adding that this could be possible with high production of crude oil, which is the mainstay of the national economy.

“I want to see a different society from this hour. The Federal Government is doing everything to see that our crude oil production level increases. But every day, we are having issues of pipeline vandalism and all the associated problems.

“All these people carrying out these evil acts, they’re not coming from the moon, they live in our communities and we know them. I am charging this council to, as a first step, take charge of your communities.

“If there is any information that you need to share with us, kindly do. Overall, we need our country to progress. We need our country to be stable. We need our country to grow economically. It is through only one means: our oil production.”

He expressed delight and gratitude to God that the council remained in existence, despite the protracted political travail confronting the state and his administration.

The governor had reportedly sacked the chairman of the council and paramount ruler of Emohua Local Government Area, Eze Ohna Chidi Awuse, for not putting his picture and that of his deputy, Prof. Ngozi Odu, in the 2024 calendar and replaced him with Eze Chike Worlu Wodo.

Fubara, however, explained the reason for the appointment of a new chairman to steer the affairs of the traditional council.

He said, “There is nothing new that has happened. The immediate past chairman served out his tenure, and the tenure is usually a one-year duration.

“It is at the discretion of the governor to extend such tenure. I believe, from my assessment, there was no reason to extend it, but rather to bring in fresh blood that can bring the council together.

“And what we did, we did in good faith because our communities, our people are important to us. I want to commend the chairman who is barely three months in office for putting this meeting together; it shows leadership.”

The governor said it was the first after the appointment of Eze Wodo that he would be addressing the council and charged the new chairman to lead the council aright.

He said he had been furnished with a comprehensive list of names of all traditional rulers of First Class, Second Class and Third Class totalling over 150.

He said the state government could not take in one block, the purchase of their official vehicles, going by that number and urged them to consider the option of monetising it, because most of them owned their cars already.

In his address, Eze Wodo thanked the governor for maintaining peace in the state in the face of the unwarranted political crisis.

Wodo, who is the Paramount Ruler of Apara Kingdom in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of the State, urged the governor not to fall into the traps of detractors by confronting their violence with violence.

On his part, the Rivers State Commissioner for Chieftaincy and Community Affairs, Charles Amadi, noted with concern the degradation of values in the various communities.

Amadi said there had been hope all along that traditional rulers in the state would pull their various domains through with tenable innovations that would stem the dwindling social decay in the various communities.

“However, I strongly commend traditional rulers of Rivers State that have displayed their good roles effectively and efficiently in the various communities that yielded relative peace that has ushered in good governance in Rivers State,” he said.