FORMER Rivers State sole administrator, Ibok-Ete Ibas, a retired vice admiral, visited the Presidential Villa in Abuja on Wednesday amid rising pressure that he account for his stewardship.
According to a Channel TV report, Ibas arrived at the State House around 5:50 p.m. carrying a stack of files.
He was later joined by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, while the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, was reported to be present at the Villa.
The visit followed President Bola Tinubu’s September 17 decision to lift emergency rule in the oil-rich state, and reinstate Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and the state House of Assembly members.
Ibas appearance also came just days after the Rivers State House of Assembly voted to investigate how state funds were spent between March and September, when the state of emergency lasted in the state.
Details of the visit had yet to be made public as of the time of publishing this report.
At its first sitting after resuming, the Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Speaker Martin Amaewhule, announced it would probe how state funds were spent under Ibas’s watch.
Part of the House’s resolutions read, “To explore the process of knowing what transpired during the emergency rule with regard to spending from the consolidated revenue fund for the award of contracts and other expenditure.”
This was as civil society organisations, including Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) called for the probe into the financial dealings of the former sole administrator in the state.
The organisation demanded clarity on how he managed over N254.37 billion received from the Federation Account between March and August 2025.
In a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, SERAP further asked Ibas to account for allocations, including a reported N22 billion allegedly budgeted for installing CCTV at the State House.
However, Ibas, through his media aide, Hector Igbikiowubu, dismissed the Assembly’s planned probe as a “fool’s errand,” arguing that lawmakers neither appointed him nor oversaw his mandate, which came directly from the President and was supervised by the National Assembly.
“When you say they were going to probe the tenure of the administrator, was it the Assembly that appointed the administrator?
“You see, the point to note is that commentary is free. You can’t stop people from running commentary. The House of Assembly has been on break for a very long time, and you will appreciate that they have not been able to discharge their functions for such a long time,” Punch quoted him to have said.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M