When President Bola Tinubu returned to Abuja a month ago after a prolonged holiday in Paris and brief stopover at a summit in Abu Dhabi, a newspaper headline sardonically announced that the “Nigerian Ambassador to France pays his first official visit to Nigeria in 2026”.
Tinubu, frequently criticised for his frequent sojourns in foreign locations, France in particular, certainly emits absentee landlord vibes on occasion and has acquired a reputation for maintaining dogged silences at times when he has been expected to issue bold statements about dramatic developments on his home turf.
He hasn’t, for example, said a single word publicly about Trump’s controversial Christmas Day airstrike on Sokoto. Or about the war that had been raging in Rivers State as Nyesom Wike, the ex-Governor and current Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Minister, tries to wrestle his onetime protégé and successor, Siminalayi Fubara, to the ground.
But we have been told, by seemingly reliable anonymous insiders, that Tinubu HAS intervened in the crisis by telling Wike to abandon the impeachment he was planning with his loyalists, local lawmakers, and by telling Fubara to accept Wike as the political leader of the state.
Talk about sitting on the fence!
Tinubu, a wily operator, has ensured that neither faction totally wins nor totally loses…and that he and he alone is totally in control. Long story short, the only REAL political leader of Rivers State is Tinubu.
I don’t know why Wike and Fubara have boxed themselves into a corner marked slavery and basically transformed themselves into pathetic puppets by handing a state they don’t own over to outsiders.
Rivers State has been a victim of their quarrel for nearly two years and has suffered endless indignities and shenanigans, including a six-month state of emergency that saw a military administrator replace Fubara.
It is clear that this unseemly saga will not end for the foreseeable future.
At stake are control of Port Harcourt (a city that is only outranked by Abuja and Lagos), a first division state that is full of oil/gas wells and the billions of petrodollars Rivers governors have at their disposal.
Tinubu is desperate to hang onto this precious jewel that Wike embedded in his crown in 2023; and the last thing he needs with an election on the horizon is a dangerously destabilised Rivers State.
Hence reading the antagonists the Riot Act.
Wike cannot possibly be happy about the president’s decision to pour oil on troubled waters and rescue Fubara from impeachment.
Wike is miffed about the fact that Fubara has attracted the backing of most Rivers People, most APC apparatchiks and most journalists.
Daniel Bwala, the president’s spokesman even threw some big brickbats at Wike on a Channels TV programme a couple of weeks ago.
After damning Wike with faint praise and reducing his considerable contribution to Tinubu’s victory to a minimum by dismissively describing him as merely “instrumental”, Bwala basically told Wike to respect the rule of law, shut up and leave Fubara alone.
He also said that Wike had been compensated adequately and refused to acknowledge Wike’s achievements as FCT minister.
This public humiliation thrilled Wike’s enemies because there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Bwala was speaking for his boss.
But the bromance isn’t over. Wike and Tinubu have formed one of the most productive political partnerships Nigeria has ever witnessed. Wike has “handled” Rivers (which Peter Obi is said to have won in 2023), the PDP (which has been brought to its knees) and the judiciary (which is said to be full of compliant judges) for Tinubu and is expected to help him bag FCT in 2027 (Peter Obi won FCT in 2023).
It would however appear that Tinubu now wants to slap Wike down to protect his reputation and his relationship with Fubara without discarding Wike who is still potentially immensely useful.
Fubara is the legally recognised leader of Rivers State but Wike is still its political overlord, in the sense that 27 out of 32 the local legislators and 99 per cent of the 23 local government chairmen are diehard Wike loyalists. Fubara may be popular at the grassroots and other levels. But he is essentially a king with very few courtiers.
It is beginning to look as if Wike will have his way and select the next governor of Rivers State. Fubara is beginning to look like a mere placeholder who will eventually be toast.
But a year is a long time in politics and it will be interesting to see how Wike manages the challenges he will face in the coming months.
Will his partnership with Tinubu robustly survive? Or will something dramatic happen to turn the tide in Fubara’s favour?
Watch this space.
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