By Donu Kogbara
I am so upset about the unfair imposition of a state of emergency on Rivers State. I have totally lost faith in President Tinubu, FCT Minister Wike, their supporters and the National Assembly.
I have complained extensively about this crisis on YouTube. Today I am feeling too emotionally drained to write anything, so let me leave you with two commentaries that were written by other people.
The first, which I chanced upon online, has no name attached to it but neatly and cynically outlines the way in which Nigerians sleepwalk into nonsense and allow themselves to be enslaved.
The night after the declaration…
1. Television and radio stations will be full of legal and political analysts huffing and puffing .
2. They will weigh in on the propriety or otherwise of the president’s decision.
3. Newspapers’ pages will be filled with articles and editorial opinions in like manners.
4. President Tinubu will read and watch if he cares to.
5. His media handlers will watch and read and decide which ones to respond to and those to ignore.
6. The National Assembly led by Godswill Akpabio will meet and endorse the declaration.
7. Fubara and his deputy will be watching events from the fringes of Niger Delta.
8. Government will encourage and pay some militants to burn a small section of the vast pipelines in the Niger Delta to justify a state of anarchy and the state of emergency.
9. Nigerians will gather at beer parlours, social media platforms and exercise their two-week outrage.
10. Contractors and politicians in Rivers State will look for the phone number of the military man now in charge and renew contacts with him for contracts and appointments even if temporal.
11. In the end what Tinubu and Wike want will happen and life will go on.
12. Please forget the judiciary. It is the presidency that is the judiciary.
13. Please forget the NBA. They will issue statements and that’s it. Their members are the lawyers who argue cases before the courts from where any judgement can be delivered regardless of the facts and the laws.
14. Those who are too vociferously opposed to the declaration may be invited by the DSS or the EFCC.
15. Members of the House of Assembly will pretend to be affected while they are busy popping champagne bottled; they are the winners and will emerge stronger. Quote me!
16. The president is one of the most powerful leaders in the world.
17. Nigerians are some of the most docile, corrupt, tribalistic, nepotistic, and incompetent people in the world as far as politics is concerned.
18. That’s how things work here.
•This second commentary was written by Farooq Kperogi just before the National Assembly surprised nobody by doing the wrong thing:
I just stumbled on a story in The Cable this morning claiming that President Bola Tinubu’s henchmen in the Senate and House are struggling to gather enough votes to rubber-stamp his unconstitutional suspension of democracy in Rivers State and installation of a retired military officer as sole administrator.
Frankly, it’s hard to believe. Most of our legislators have a reputation for having price tags attached rather openly to their principles, or what’s left of them.
Yet, if by some miracle this story checks out, I’ll gladly eat my scepticism. It might mean that amid Nigeria’s ocean of opportunists, there’s still a handful willing to occasionally pretend they have backbones.
Yes, the Constitution indeed allows Tinubu to declare a state of emergency, but nowhere does it grant him the authority to suspend elected governors, deputies, or legislators.
The idea of installing a “sole administrator” is a ghostly relic of Nigeria’s dark era of military absolutism.
Remember, former President Obasanjo pulled this stunt in Ekiti in 2006, not because the state burned uncontrollably, like Plateau State in 2004, but simply because he didn’t like the governor. So, he accused him of corruption, which became the basis for his unconstitutional ouster.
Of course, irony had a good laugh, given Obasanjo himself was swimming in allegations of corruption while citing corruption as his reason for undermining democracy.
Goodluck Jonathan, on the other hand, declared states of emergency in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa because of the escalation of Boko Haram insurgency. But he did so without demolishing elected institutions.
Tinubu, a man who built his political career on the perception of battling military tyranny, now bizarrely aspires to mimic Obasanjo, the very authoritarian he once vehemently condemned.
Is irony on vacation or is hypocrisy now Tinubu’s political philosophy?
If we permit Tinubu to establish this precedent, democracy in Nigeria becomes a sitting duck.
Any future president with a grudge or craving for unchecked power can manufacture a crisis at will, dismantle elected institutions, and impose obedient lackeys as “sole administrators” to rule states by decree.
That’s not democracy; that’s dictatorship on drip-feed.
@Vanguard
