The Director-General of Advocacy for Good Governance, Otunba Dele Ologbese, has criticised President Ahmed Tinubu’s discretionary invocation of emergency rule in addressing the political crisis in Rivers State.
Describing the move as executive brigandage, lawlessness, and an affront on tenets of participatory democracy, Ologbese condemned the decision as unconstitutional and an infringement on the rights of Rivers State citizens to determine their leaderships.
Speaking with journalists in Akure, the Ondo State Capital, Ologbese, a political scientist, berated the President’s action as hasty, ill-timed, controversial, and unwarranted.
He argued that the invocation of Section 305 of the Constitution lacked justification and democratic jurisdictions or principles.
He expressed strong opposition to excessive use of powers by the two political gladiators in Rivers State; Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his estranged godfather, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike who, he noted, had made the state almost ungovernable for two years.
Ologbese stressed that declaring a state of emergency to resolve Rivers’ political crisis had no place in a constitutional democracy.
Instead, he advocated consultations, dialogues, persuasions, and reconciliations as most effective approaches to addressing the situations.
According to him, “We expected Mr President, as a father of the nation, to use his executive position to reconcile the two belligerent parties rather than imposing emergency measures.”
To avert a violation of the rule of law and constitutional order, Ologbese called on the National Assembly to restore democratic governance in Rivers State by reinstating Governor Fubara and the state’s House of Assembly members to their respective positions without delay.
“This is the only feasible way to ensure lasting peace and stability in the state,” he asserted.
Condemning what he termed the President’s resort to coercion, Ologbese warned that such an approach was “a dangerous trend, an anachronistic venture, and a blatant violation of Rivers State citizens’ fundamental rights to elect their leaders.”
He insisted that only the people, through their elected representatives, had the constitutional authority to remove their leaders, not an external force that ought to have remained neutral in the political crisis.
“I must emphasize that using emergency rule to resolve political crises in Nigeria has proven outdated and counterproductive.
“History shows that it is a despotic and arbitrary act that has no place in constitutional democracy,” Ologbese declared.
While acknowledging the political turmoil in Rivers State, the deepening schism, and the power struggle between Fubara and Wike, he criticised the President’s failure to act as a neutral mediator.
“All eyes were on Mr President to bring the feuding parties together without dismantling the democratic structures established by the people.
Rivers State must not be governed by decrees or executive discretion in violation of the rule of law.”
Challenging President Tinubu’s neutrality, Ologbese urged him to demonstrate fairness by immediately suspending or removing Wike as the FCT Minister, if indeed his actions were free from bias or sinister intent.
Finally, he called on the National Assembly to reject the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State to prevent the emergence of a dictatorship under Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, who, he warned, would govern with an iron fist like a military despot.
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