As the military vans move into Rivers Government House

Following the protracted political crisis in Rivers State, President Bola Tinubu declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. He suspended the embattled Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and all the members of the House of Assembly for six months. He also selected Vice Admiral Ibokette Ibas (rtd) as administrator to take charge of Rivers State’s affairs pending the suspension period. It is a crazy situation that culminates the months of crisis that has made Rivers State a centre of chaos and endless political sabre-rattling. Expectedly, there has been a legal debate about the constitutionality of the President’s actions and what is at stake for his political ambitions in the seemingly unending crisis. For the next couple of weeks, we can be very assured that we will be subjected to endless analysis of this development on various media platforms. The interpreters of all maladies will turn this development over and over, scrutinising it to death.

As military vans full of armed operatives head toward the Rivers State Government House in Port Harcourt following the President’s pronouncement, some of us are uneasy at this turn of events. One can only imagine what the spectacle of a military takeover even at a mere state level will mean for Nigeria’s fragile democracy. If armed personnel can be brought in to resolve the embattled Rivers State crisis, how many steps before people begin to make another plausible association between a military resolution at the federal level too? Yes, the Rivers crisis is overdue for a resolution, but a state of emergency and an appointment of a uniformed officer seems imprudent.

Unlike the previous instances where a state of emergency was declared, we had just passed a moment in our national life where people experiencing severe hardships made some rather loud and feverish calls for a military takeover. It was just this time last year. Those who dared voice out their desire to see the army return to power were scolded for their deliriousness. They said the military has no business in government anymore forever, and we should learn to stop casting nostalgic glances back to the time men in jackboots sashayed freely on the Nigerian political stage. A mere one year later, and it seems the possibility of them returning is not foreclosed.

In August, some 90 people were arrested because they had carried Russian flags during their demonstrations against strangulating economic hardship, and some misguided ones among them wanted a coup. In November, they were taken to trial although the authorities had to drop the charges of treason against them following the outcry that saw 30 minors among them being charged to court. These are all very recent developments where the present government demonstrated a high level of intolerance against any suggestion of military solutions to any of the crises facing Nigeria. Those who were looking for a coup might have been guilty of presuming that the military had anything better to offer Nigeria, but their agitation against a government that had grown too malicious against its own people was coming from nowhere.

During that protest, the police Inspector General Kayode Egbetokun swore that the demonstrations and the call for a military takeover were financed by some sponsors from “outside the country” and they must arrest those carrying flags to be able to get to the sponsors. He was so sure that “the sponsors of these protests, some of them, have a clear motive to subvert the government of the day; we are not going to allow that; we will defend our democracy”. The same government that promised to defend democracy against interlopers is using the military to subvert a fractious democracy in Rivers State. Do not get me wrong, even though I think the Rivers State crisis has reached a point where something needed to give, the sudden show of resolve on Tinubu’s part starkly contradicts the ethos of a democracy that corrects itself without the intervention of men in fatigues, which this administration has tried to project.

In October, Presidential Aide Bayo Onanuga went on a rampage against a media house that dared to give a voice to the agitation of Nigerians who were looking for a military solution to Nigeria’s economic crisis. Onanuga had said, “It is unacceptable…to incite calls for military intervention based on transient difficulties.” Why is it suddenly acceptable for soldiers to take over the Rivers Government House? Have they concluded that what is going on in that region is more than “transient difficulties”?

The second thing that comes to the fore is Tinubu’s record on a president’s declaring a state of emergency. Again, this is another instance where the bad faith politics that Tinubu has played for years catches up with him. Like his pre-presidency commentary on fuel subsidies and several other economic policies, Tinubu is once again being revealed as a blowhard with many opinions but very few moral convictions. Now that he is in power, his doublemindedness is being manifested when he takes the very actions for which he condemns his predecessors. From his poor record on human rights to the subversion of the ideals of democracy, Tinubu’s presidency has revealed him to be a man whose loudest pronouncements on issues were never more than cynically exploiting situations. For a man who once said that a state of emergency in Lagos would “kill” democracy, he has sure come a very long way.

In 2013 when former President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, Tinubu condemned him saying it was a ploy to manipulate the 2015 election. Just 12 years later, the same Tinubu would go on to state in his speech about a state of emergency that the latest security reports made available to me show that between yesterday and today, there have been disturbing incidents of vandalisation of pipelines by some militant without the governor taking any action to curtail them….With all these and many more, no good and responsible President will stand by and allow the grave situation to continue without taking remedial steps prescribed by the Constitution to address the situation in the state, which no doubt requires extraordinary measures to restore good governance, peace, order and security.

So how did he move from reading Jonathan’s action as a ruse of self-perpetuation to now seeing a state of emergency as what a “good and responsible” president should do in a bad situation? It is tempting to think that he has evolved ideologically and politically, and that experience has taught him practical politics, but I am more inclined to believe he was just a loudmouth who never cared about Nigeria. His politics is, and has always been, self-serving. That is why, no matter where his heart might lie in this Rivers issue, it will be virtually impossible for him to convince anyone of his righteousness. His intervention in Rivers State is far more self-evidently about 2027 politics than his projection on Jonathan. Given how much the Rivers electoral figures tilted against him in 2023, he cannot risk losing that state again.

Yes, the politics of partisanship that makes people question the actions of a leader they did not vote for will definitely be at play in the cynicism that will greet Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers, but that will not exhaust the reason people will read meanings in his action. It will also be because this man spent his political opposition years blowing ashes into gusts of wind to taint his opponents. Now that the wind of fate has suddenly reversed direction, he is accumulating the same dust and his true self is being revealed. The same measure with which he judged others is being used to find him wanting.