By Gbenro Olajuyigbe

The most significant turning point in times of crisis is the ability, capability and capacity of leaders to take decisions that will address the crisis, reduce its risk and manage the consequences of actions.

The decision of the president, Bola Tinubu to proclaim a State of Emergency on Rivers State and remove the Governor and the members of the parliament was unconstitutional, illegal and undemocratic. An elected governor can only be removed from office through the process of impeachment, resignation, incapacitation or death. Anything else is extra judicial, unconstitutional and illegal

By removing a constitutionally elected governor, President Tinubu over reached himself, arrogate to himself power that is not given to him by the constitution he swore oath to defend. He diminished his own democratic credentials and became the heresy he condemned in Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan at the various junctions of our national history, when these men took the same decisions.

President Jonathan did not even remove the Governors of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States when he proclaimed a State of Emergency before the then Mr. Tinubu condemned his actions. He has now become what he hated in others. President Tinubu was provided with opportunity to prove that he was better than these men but he smashed it on the altar of political expediency and vested interest.

President Tinubu, if he had to, should have declared a State of Emergency while retaining the governor and the legislature. All that was needed was for President Tinubu, in his address to Nigerians, to state that during the period of emergency, the Federal government, including the National Assembly will take responsibility for law and order; particularly protection and security of the people and infrastructure of the State. He should have announced the setting up of a reconciliation committee of apolitical persons to address the outstanding issues between the Rivers State Governor and members of the State Assembly within the period of the emergency.

The terms of reference should have included carrying out smoothly the judgment of the Supreme Court and addressing every outstanding issue in the interests of the people of Rivers State. This is how leaders strategically, creatively and innovatively provide durable solutions for sustainable peace, security and development; more so, in democracy! 

In his proclamation of the State of Emergency, the President profusely quoted the ruling of the Supreme Court that has not been enforced. How does that justify the proclamation? The duty to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling is that of the executive, which Tinubu presides over. His frustration in this regard cannot become a reason to enforce what the Supreme Court has not declared in its rulings. It therefore seems, by proclamation of the State of Emergency, the President sat as an appellate court in what the final arbiter in our justice administration System has adjudicated on. This is manifestly illegal and unacceptable.

Also, Tinubu’s reference to blowing-up of the oil pipelines by vandals in his speech as evidence of Fubara’s inefficiency is more an indictment of the Federal government, which through its agencies has responsibilities to protect critical national infrastructure. It was not the statutory duty of the Rivers State Governor. The responsibility is vicariously that of the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed forces. 

Every fertile ground for indolence presents a space for predatory governance. Wherever, citizens abandon the duty of demanding accountability and prefer the shenanigan of irrelevance to the core issues of governance, slave camp is bound to emerge as governmental edifice.

What should one expects in a nation of endless drama? Swinging from Portable and Ogun State officials to  Obasa and the Lagos House of Assembly  to Natasha and Akpabio to Lande and his ‘truth or dare wife’, from Asake and father and now to Rita, the lad corps member, whose description of the President’s obnoxious policies approximate the real existential  challenges she called terrible.

Astonishingly, the infamous online liars and glottal bloggers who despicably described Asake’s father as deadbeat and evil father for abandoning his son, in their own warped estimation, are astonishingly the same people condemning the corps member who captured Nigeria’s situation under Tinubu as terrible.

 Nigeria is not a slave camp, where Tinubu was appointed to be slaves’ owner. By offering to become a president, Tinubu raised himself up for judgment; soft or harsh. It is not his prerogative to determine how he would be judged. If he doesn’t want to be described as terrible, the ball is in his court. He can move from being terrible to being terrific. The truth is that the people of a country that just dropped from position 8 to position 6 in the Global Terrorism Index as the sixth most terrorized country in the world have the rights to feel terrified!

The report, released on March 5, assigned Nigeria a score of 7.658, marking a shift from 8th place in 2023 and 2024 and recording 565 terrorism-related deaths in 2024.

Nearly a decade and half after the start of the new wave of violent extremism that has diminished lives, livelihoods and liberty in Nigeria, there is no range of significant indicators that the consequential widespread violence and insecurity will abate if nothing is urgently done to arrest the descent into total anarchy. The dramatic increase in violence amidst palpable failure of governance has substantially affected personal and national development and has also contributed to the frightening state of fragility of the polity. There have been proliferation of solutions, often military, that are hardly in tune with the contextual and emerging issues and drivers of the violence and insecurity. What are our problem solving thought lines other than diversionary pedestrian debates? 

Isn’t it true as Rita said that the current state of poverty in Nigeria is alarmingly appalling? Embarrassingly scandalous? Cruelly ill managed and desperately politicized? 

Nigeria’s fragility is not in doubt. The challenge of integration is frighteningly obvious. The nation appears stuck. Conscious effort to build national consensus that can stare her away from precipice is crucial. A state grimed with conflicts and violence can only dream of development; not achieving it!

The storm is far from abating. Economically, politically and socially, we are grooming a nation that seems to be a burden to her citizens; a nation where spaces are being shrunk and opportunities have become political tools in the hands of the prebendalists in power.

 Unprecedented financial and moral corruption has swallowed what is left of the dignity of governance. Sadly, adults are becoming children in acts of reasoning and governance while children are no longer child-like. They are not prepared to get caught up in the fire storm of a country that has no place for their skills and talents nor has plans for their future.  Many have escaped from a country they considered a concentration camp. No thanks to the japa syndrome. Many others are trapped but ready to fight. We are now witnessing the wholesale rejection of repression by repressive and regressive governance. 

President Tinubu has more challenges to confront in Nigeria than to be deepening rivers of crisis with digger of vested interest! 

Gbenro Olajuyigbe is the Executive Director of Emergency & Risk Alert Initiative