RIVERS CRISIS: Tinubu’s 8-Point Deal Rejected As Fubara’s Camp, Other Top Leaders Kick

The political crisis rocking Rivers State appears not to be over following the rejection of the 8-point resolution put forward by President Bola Tinubu.

Signs of peace had emerged on Monday night when the two opposing camps signed a pact after a closed-door meeting at the presidential villa.

Although, Governor Siminalayi Fubara in his first address after the peace pact had expressed his commitment to ensuring peace in the state. He said: “There is no price that will be too big to pay to ensure that peace prevails.”

The resolution reached at the meeting, which may have placed Wike in control of the political structure in the oil-rich state, has not gone down well with Fubara’s camp. Some of his allies and party members kicked against it.  For instance, the PDP insists that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, must set a date to conduct fresh elections to replace the 25 vacancies in the Rivers State House of Assembly.

Obviously rejecting the truce brokered by President Tinubu, the PDP, in a statement by its acting National Chairman, Umar Iliya Damagum, said: “Our Party insists that having now vacated and lost their seats, the only option available for the former lawmakers, if they wish to return to the House of Assembly, is to seek fresh nomination and re-election on the platform of any political party of their choice in line with the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) and the Electoral Act, 2022.

“The 25 former Rivers lawmakers freely and without any cause vacated their seats, being fully aware of the consequences of defection from the Party upon which they were elected into the Rivers State House of Assembly without the conditions stipulated by the 1999 Constitution.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, there is no division in the PDP at the national or any other level for that matter to justify the defection of the 25 former members of the Rivers State House of Assembly from the Party. They therefore vacated their seats for reasons best known to them and cannot return to the House of Assembly without passing through a fresh electoral process in accordance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the Electoral Act, 2022.

“Moreover, the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly Rt. Hon (Barr) Ehie O. Edison DSSRS officially declared the seat of the defected now former members vacant in line with Section 109 (1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). The Rivers State House of Assembly, having become Functus Officio on the matter, cannot re-admit the former lawmakers unless through the channel of a fresh election.

“Our Party therefore counsels the former members of the Rivers State House of Assembly not to be deceived by anybody giving them the false hope and impracticable assurances in Abuja that they can return to the Rivers State House of Assembly without a fresh election or that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can be stopped from conducting fresh election into the 25 Rivers State Constituencies where vacancies have occurred by reason of their defection.

“The national leadership of the PDP charges all members of our great Party in Rivers State to remain united and resolute in the defence of Constitutional democracy and Rule of Law in Rivers State.”

Reacting to the 8-point deal, Ijaw national leader, Chief Edwin Clark, while speaking to journalists on Tuesday, picked holes in the resolutions. According to him, the resolution was aimed at handing over the political leadership of the state to the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.

He said from the terms of the purported settlement, it was obvious that Tinubu used his role as a mediator, to show gratitude to the FCT minister for “delivering” Rivers state to him during the last presidential elections. “We will resist any attempt subtle, subterranean, covert, overt, to make an elected Ijaw son, Siminialayi Fubara, the Governor of Rivers State, a servant, a stooge to Nyesome Wike, who had boasted that any attempt by the Governor to touch his so-called ‘Wike’s structure’, with the connivance and support of President Bola Tinubu, will be resisted by us.

“Like I said, we will go to court to resist this oppressive action using all available constitutional and legal means. It is on this note I wish to appeal to the youths who are aggrieved, to remain calm, as we will use legal means to dethrone this hydra-headed monster, called oppression”. Similarly, elder statesman and lawyer Robert Clarke, SAN, said that the President has no constitutional right to have waded into the Rivers State controversy and power tussle between Fubara and Wike. Clarke made this known in an interview with Arise News, saying that the idea of independent candidacy in elections will solve the majority of the political issues in Nigeria.

“The constitutional role of the President in all this fracas – there should have been none. Because we were not expecting it, none has been provided for. “The only time, the only constitution that allows the Federal government to put its mouth in a local thing, was during the first republic when a declaration of emergency was declared in the west.

“The president has no power; he knows that. The best legal brain cannot help him. You can’t bring Robert Clarke to come and change the law to enable the president to come and intervene. Under what constitutional provisions? So, the law by itself as of today did not provide (a constitutional right for Tinubu to intervene in State matters).”

Other top voices that reacted to the development condemned the President’s intervention and 8-points deal. Some of them include Legal expert and SAN, Robert Clarke, Former federal lawmaker Shehu Sani and other politicians.