By Ebuka Onyekwelu, Ph.D
At last, Mr. Siminalayi Fubara has made his best political decision since he became the Governor of Rivers State. His decision to step aside from the APC primaries holding today is the best thing a smart politician under the circumstances can do. A politician should not lose his last fight; instead, let him quit. First of all, the assumption by some that Fubara is a coward is untrue. Governor Fubara demonstrated a particular speed of treachery and deployed the same with boldness to bring the political landscape of Rivers State under his control, but failed. The structures he rattled just couldn’t yield to him. Politics requires a lot of compromises, diplomacy, and fence-mending, not necessarily a combat. But he appeared to want to fight, then, take more and more, but not concede. Those are manifest signs of political incompetence. I suspect this was a major reason several interventions to resolve his disagreement with Wike failed. Whatever the case, Fubara is not weak because he exhausted all his options fighting. Joining the APC was a part of that option as a quick route to outsmart his former boss. But now, he has seen that the move too was bound to fail.
Do we know what it means for a governor to demolish the State House of Assembly complex because of politics? No governor has done that before in Nigeria! Nobody who does such damage can be correctly regarded as a weak person or a coward. Not to mention a governor with executive powers and enormous resources at his disposal. Fubara is a fighter, but he was probably in a business that was not meant for people like him. Politics is not combat.
Within his first year in office, he was caught in a web of intense disagreement with his former boss, and Minister of Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike. Then, he moved the fight to local government chairmen in Rivers State and finally, to Rivers State House of Assembly, whose members he denied their right to duty for a year. Governor Fubara was not only fighting on all fronts, but he was deep in a premature political war that he was unprepared for.
For context, Wike has been a player in Rivers State politics for decades, rising through the political ranks within the system. Fubara was a civil servant who just focused on his job and grew in his career. To think that, for whatever reason, Fubara now has what it takes to dismantle Wike within one year in office was his worst political error. There is hardly any political or even moral justification to commence a war with his political benefactor within such a short time. On the other hand, Wike, aside from being a formidable entity in the politics of Rivers State, is currently in the scheme of national politics, and he cannot be dismissed. He also has faithful men in his political fold in Rivers, which is rare in Nigeria’s political landscape. But instead of Fubara to build with compromise, he went to war with members of Rivers State House of Assembly. This highlights the thinking by the governor that he can remove and supplant key government and political figures with new and less experienced hands, which was a gross miscalculation. It is easier for a governor to win the loyalty of key political players than to try to remove and replace them.
After the long and torturous trial and error, poor judgments, and self-inflicted political injuries, Governor Fubara came to the conclusion that he had made a mistake and decided to quit so that he would stop fighting. That is his best option: exit and leave quietly. Those arguing that he should have joined the opposition party and kept fighting do not really appreciate the level of war he has waged and still failed. No matter what he does, as long as he keeps fighting, he will keep losing. He would have been defeated in the APC primaries, and if he had joined any opposition political party, he still would have been defeated at the General Election. Fubara’s problem is deeply rooted in Rivers State. The people of Rivers do not appear to be really standing with Governor Fubara. It is easy to link this to his numerous fights. The members of the House of Assembly being fought have families, aides, friends, and allies who are at the receiving end of the war. This applies to the local government chairmen as well.
With his exit from Rivers politics, Governor Fubara can go home quietly and live his private life on his own terms. Not everyone is suitable for public service, especially under certain circumstances.
