By Gloria Akudoro
Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar has said that the state of emergency which was declared by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu in Rivers state on Tuesday, ” reeks of political manipulation and outright bad faith.”
President Bola Tinubu had on Tuesday evening, imposed a state of emergency in Rivers State, citing ongoing political turmoil and instability.
In a nationwide address on Tuesday, Tinubu announced the immediate suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara, Deputy Governor Ngozi Odu, and all members of the Rivers State House of Assembly for an initial period of six months.
“Having soberly reflected on and evaluated the political situation in Rivers State and the Governor and Deputy Governor of Rivers State having failed to make a request to me as President to issue this proclamation as required by section 305(5) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, it has become inevitably compelling for me to invoke the provision of section 305 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended, to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State with effect from today, 18th March, 2025, and I so do,” the president stated.
But Atiku in a press statement on Tuesday, which personally signed said: “anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Bola Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers. His blatant refusal — or calculated negligence — in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful.
“Beyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the President’s desk.
“Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent.
” It is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.
“If federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility. Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tinubu’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms., ” the former vice president added.