When President Tinubu called the Elders of Rivers State for a meeting on 11th March, 2025 and charged them to go back to the state and work to restore peace, he stealthily pulled the rug from under their feet with his declaration of the state of emergency barely a week after, leaving them with no time to carry out his mandate. This subterfuge, indicated a mad rush to get something untoward done amidst all odds, as the days unfolded.
Little wonder that the retired Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, the Sole Administrator appointed, unlike a placeholder, is in a hurry, too, to systematically undo every and any semblance of democratic structure in the administrative arrangement in the State.
Starting from the mundane and the ordinary, Ibas removed the photographs of the elected governor Sim Fubara from all offices when the governor had not yet been removed from office but only on suspension. This was a red alert on a possibly anti-democratic mindset the Sole Administrator was coming in with, probably engineered by his paymasters, advertently.
The next was the overly audacious dissolution of the board of existing statutory institutions such as the State Independent Electoral Commission, Councils of Traditional Rulers and governing Councils of tertiary institutions etc.
The Unkindest of them all is the bold and unilateral appointments of administrative Coordinators for the 23 local government Areas in Rivers State by the Sole Administrator.
I am not an expert in Law or constitutionalism, but every lover of true democracy can easily recognize an anti-democratic infraction when he sees one. Who is drumming for Ibas? Are these bold steps taken so far captured by the 19th March, 2025 Gazette that appointed him as the Sole Administrator or are these sweeping powers contained in the extracts of the National Assembly Proceedings of 20th March, 2025 that validate his appointment?
Thank God that a civil society organization who is in pain and disconcerted, has dragged the Sole Administrator before Justice Mohammed Adamu of the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt, who has granted an interim order following his ex-parte application, restraining the Sole Administrator from appointing LGA Coordinators, or similarly titled officials, in the State.
The recent showboating by the suspended Rivers House of Assembly members in the far away United Kingdom, UK, which went viral, and the recent visit to the Garden City by the “enfant terrible” himself just before the announcement of the LGA Coordinators by Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, is another high point in the this playbook of Crisis.
Democracy is being trampled upon in Rivers, no doubt. But those who are unperturbed and watching from the sidelines, thinking that suspended Governor Sim Fubara is the only target will soon find out that the Rivers people are the ultimate victims. Let the Rivers people cry out loud. Let Ibas be barred from his over-the-bar actions by the people’s collective resolve to say no!
