FORMER Vice President Atiku Abubakar has condemned President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State.
He described the decision as a politically motivated move designed to punish perceived opponents.
Tinubu, in a nationwide broadcast earlier today, March 18, suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and all members of the State House of Assembly for six months, citing escalating political tensions and security threats, including the bombing of an oil facility in the state.
The president, however, retained the state judiciary and appointed Ibok Ekwe Ibas, a retired rear admiral, as the state administrator.
But Abubakar, in a statement shortly after the president’s broadcast, rejected Tinubu’s justification for the action.
He said the president had been a partisan actor in the political feud between Fubara and the Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike and had allowed the crisis to fester for political gain.
He also blamed the president for security failure that led to the destruction of oil facilities in the state.
“Anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Bola Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers. His blatant refusal or calculated negligence in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful.
“Beyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the President’s desk.
“Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent,” he wrote.
Abubakar further accused Tinubu of weaponising the state of emergency to assert control over Rivers, warning that the move could set a dangerous precedent for democracy.
The former PDP presidential candidate also warned that Tinubu’s handling of the crisis could undo years of peacebuilding efforts in the Niger Delta, likening the situation to the unrest seen before the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme.
“It is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.
“If federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility. Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and @officialABAT’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms,” he added.
The ICIR reports that the political standoff in Rivers has brewed for months, with Fubara, Wike, and the state lawmakers locked in a power struggle over control of the state’s political structure.
