President Bola Tinubu on Monday lambasted Siminalayi Fubara when the Rivers governor and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, had a peace meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, at least two sources who were present at the meeting told NewMailNG.
Tinubu chaired the meeting which was attended by Vice President Kashim Shettima, the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, a former governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili, and the chairpersons of the PDP and the APC in Rivers.
The sources said the president was “very angry” with Fubara over the demolition of the Rivers House of Assembly Complex in the course of the power tussle between the governor and Wike, describing it as a “desecration of democracy”.
Tinubu said at the meeting that he has fought for democracy all his life and that he could not imagine a governor demolishing a “symbol of democracy” like the House of Assembly, “wiping out history, not allowing anything to be taken away from there, just destroying it and everything. ”He mentioned that when he was the governor of Lagos State, the state assembly once stood up to him, but that he simply respected them and met them halfway in their demands.
During the Rivers political crisis, 25 of the lawmakers loyal to Wike defected from the PDP, of which Governor Fubara is a member, to the APC which is the ruling party at the centre.
Thereafter, four lawmakers loyal to the governor got a court order which paved the way for them to take control of the Rivers assembly.
On 13 December, while Governor Fubara was presenting the state’s 2024 budget proposal to the four-member House of Assembly, the state government was demolishing the House of Assembly Complex.
Although the government said it decided to demolish the complex because the integrity of the building had been compromised after an explosion and fire incident which occurred in October during an attempt by some lawmakers to initiate impeachment proceedings against Governor Fubara, some people believe the action was to foreclose the 25 lawmakers from holding plenary.
Veiled comment against Wike
The sources said President Tinubu, at the Abuja meeting, made reference to how he had a “problem with someone in Lagos”, apparently referring to his political disagreement with the then Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos and how he stopped the governor from getting re-elected.
The president said he did not take the laws into his hands, but that he waited till election season for the “renewal of mandate”.
It is believed that with this particular comment, the president, in a way, was telling Wike to back down in the Rivers crisis.
Tinubu, according to the sources, told all the parties in the crisis to maintain peace and not to take any action that is outside the realms of the country’s law.
One of the sources told our correspondent that it was clear to everyone in the meeting that Wike could remove Governor Fubara from power within days, given that he controls the majority of the Rivers lawmakers.
The source, however, said that “people in the meeting felt that the president believes that Fubara must be given another chance”.
As part of the peace deal between Governor Fubara and Wike, all the officials (Wike’s loyalists) who resigned from the Rivers State Government would be reappointed into Fubara’s cabinet, the 25 lawmakers whose seats were declared vacant because they defected from the PDP to the APC would be allowed back in the assembly, and that the governor should present again the state’s 2024 budget, which he had already signed into law, to all the lawmakers, including the ones whose seats had been declared vacant.
Monday’s peace meeting was the second to be mediated by the president in less than two months.
Wike, who is the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, has been locked in a fierce political battle with Mr Fubara whom he helped to succeed him as Rivers governor in the 2023 election.
