An anecdote says, ‘he who laughs last, often laughs the best’. There is no better place to situate the anecdote than what is about to play out in the politics of Rivers State as the race to 2027 heats up.
Recently, President Bola Tinubu shocked every right thinking politically conscious Nigerian when he said that the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT)Minister, Nyesom Wike is the political leader of Rivers State, over and above the first citizen of the state who is the governor, Siminalayi Fubara.
But at a crucial meeting on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja with chieftains of the All Progressive Congress, APC, the president reportedly turned down the request by members of the party at the National Assembly for automatic tickets to stand election for possible return to their seats.
Tinubu reportedly made it clear that such arrangements would undermine party structure and internal democracy and emphasised that governors, as leaders of party machinery in their respective states, must retain control over candidate selection processes.
That is to say that in Rivers State for instance, Governor Fubara will preside and ultimately decide who will get the chance to contest any elective position in 2027 in the APC as the leader of party machinery in the state.
This will however depend on whether the president has discarded the double standard he instituted in the state whereby he ceded the political leadership of the state to minister Wike and not the governor. Interestingly, the minister is not a member of the ruling party as the governor is.
Observers say it would be particularly interesting to see the chickens coming home to roost in Rivers as people like the speaker of the state House of Assembly, Martins Amaewhule and his other 26 colleagues coming to seek the blessing of Governor Fubara to return to the legislature having made a caricature of the office of the governor and the governor himself.
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It was Amaewhule with shoulders raised sky high who used to issue threats of impeachment and disparaging ultimatums to the governor. It is the recalcitrance of the Amaewhule led legislature that accounts for why Rivers State has no 2026 budget till date for refusing to entertain the presentation of the budget by the governor for legislative scrutiny and passage.
The same Amaewhule will now depend on the terribly scorned governor to push his political career beyond 2027. The same with all the political actors in the state who aligned with the FCT Minister to disparage the governor.
Where the latest development will leave the FCT Minister and his Rainbow Coalition in the state is left to the imagination. The coalition is basically tailored towards frustrating the second term ticket of Governor Fubara. But as it stands, many of the people ganging up with Wike in the coalition to deny the governor second term ticket will first queue before the governor and beg for tickets.
Some observers say it will be an opportunity for the governor to seek a pound of flesh from his traducers and recalibrate the political trajectory in the state.
Analysts also say the political developments in Rivers State from October 2023 will greatly enrich the nation’s political lexicon if properly documented.
The account will indeed be a fitting epic for reserve for posterity.
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