No matter what some electoral campaign analysts think, the 2023 governorship election in Rivers State will be one of the most keenly contested in the state’s history. Apart from the fact that both the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) picked two riverine candidates, Siminialayi Fubara and Tonye Cole, respectively, who have never held any political position to battle it out at the polls, the two candidates are fully backed by two feuding and colourful politicians in Governor Nyesom Wike and Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.
During the governorship primary, the PPD picked as its flag bearer Fubara, a former Accountant-General of Rivers State, while the APC chose Cole, a businessman and owner of Sahara Energy. The two candidates are not career politicians, but professionals, who enjoy the support of two distinguished politicians in their quest to clinch the highest political office in the state.
It is because of lack of deep political leaning and connection to the grassroots, which has led to the general consensus that the battle between the duo will end in a fight to the finish kind of battle. There is also the thinking that both Wike and Amaechi will do everything within the books to ensure that their respective candidates win. It is necessary to point out that both Wike and Amaechi, having realized that the agitation for a governor of riverine extraction was a serious issue decided to back candidates from the area. Although campaigns have not fully started, its foundation is gradually being laid.
For instance, at a recent stakeholders meeting held in Opobo, the headquarters of Opobo/Nkoro Council Area shortly after he won the PDP ticket, Fubara said his election as governor will reinforce a united and prosperous Rivers State devoid of rancour by being a governor for all the people of the state. He also emphasised that his choice was divinely orchestrated, and called on Rivers people to come out en-masse when campaigns start to support the PDP and ensure that all the party’s candidates are elected at the 2023 general election as Rivers State is naturally a PDP state.
Cole, who won the APC primary, had hardly entered the campaign mode when Wike demanded that he returned Rivers $50 million before thinking of becoming the next governor. Wike said: “He (Cole) must account for the $50 million they took from our account. Whoever knows him should tell him.
$50 million was taken from Rivers State Government account and taken to Sahara Energy account. I asked them what job you people did for Rivers State? Can I see the contract papers?” Cole responded to the governor’s allegation, saying that he had no case to answer and that there was nothing much to say because the contracts and documents were in the public domain. He also stressed that he had not been indicted or invited to any court to answer any case relating to the allegations levelled against him by the governor. His words: “This is an issue that is in the public domain.
In other words, you all have the Freedom of Information Act. So, the contracts and all the documents are available for everybody to go and take a look at. Do take a look at it, research it yourself and exactly what happened there. It is not hidden.
“So, the documents are there for all to see. I am sure that when you read it (contract documents), you will also explain why eight years later, there has been no court case, no indictment, and we are still moving around freely.” The emergence of Fubara and Cole might appear to some as a knee jerk reaction by the PDP and APC to secure victory at the polls, but it is much more than that. It is the continuation of a process that has already consumed seven years during which two electoral windows have come and gone.
During the period in question, the pressure has fallen more on Amaechi. During the 2015 and 2019 elections, Amaechi had settled for Dakuku Peterside and Cole respectively, in a bid to wrestle power from Wike. But he lost out twice as none of his candidates could defeat Wike. However, Amaechi’s resolve to go outside his Ikwerre ethnic group for the governorship ticket cast him in the mold of a detribalized politician among some Rivers people, especially his supporters.
But to some watchers of Rivers politics, such move was primarily needed to defeat Wike, who would have easily defeated any politician from Ikwerre. But the ease at which Wike defeated Peterside in 2015 somehow portrayed Amaechi as a strategist, who did not fully do his homework before the election, or worse still a politician who grossly underrated Wike’s resolve to succeed him. Then came the debacle of 2019, wherein the Supreme Court denied the APC the opportunity to field any candidate for any elective position, which was triggered by the feud between Amaechi and Senator Magnus Abe.
Abe’s camp had taken the party to court almost four years after Amaechi shattered the Ogoni born politician’s hope of getting the party’s governorship ticket in the run-up to the 2015 election. It was shortly before the 2019 election that Abe decided to act. All that Wike, who was the candidate to beat in 2015 and 2019, did was to build on the fact that Rivers voters from 1999 had always voted for the PDP. He knew that the APC would find it extremely difficult to put up a powerful showing during the elections, and kept assuring the APC during his campaign tours that it can’t score the kind of votes PDP scored in 2011.
Indeed, in the two separate elections, Wike would go on to win convincingly. It was shortly after Wike won reelection and took the oath of office for a second term that the issue of succession surfaced. In a state with diverse tribes, the agitation for “our turn” or the plea of “consider is because we have never produced a governor since the creation of Rivers” had contributed Wike to distance himself from anointing a successor. The pressure kept mounting, however, because other tribes, especially the Kalabari could not read through the mind of Wike, hence were afraid that he could hand over to an Ikwerre without the heavens falling.
By repeatedly reminding those mounting pressure for power shift to their area to fight for the governorship the same way he fought his way to power despite the odds against him, the governor further gave them more sleepless nights. How could he not know who to hand over to? They wondered. A top politician from the upland area that has never produced a governor had run to Wike, according to informed sources to tell him about his intention to contest the governorship primary. He got the go-ahead to contest and indeed bought the form. Others who approached the governor also got his nod, the source added. Yet, there was uncertainty over Wike’s preferred candidate.
It turned out that the candidate was not the real issue, but where he hails from. The fear that the governor would eventually settle for an Ikwerre candidate simply refused to go away. The reason for such conclusion was partly because two prominent Ikwerre politicians; Sir Celestine Omehia, the highly respected but “shortlived governor” who Amaechi took over from following a Supreme Court judgement and Sir Austin Okpara, a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives were very close to the governor. During most high profile events at the government house, the duo were always invited by Wike.
They also accompanied him outside the state to grace events. At a point, some who read meaning into their visibility and relevance to the Wike administration were tempted to conclude that they are like seasoned warriors that a general cannot do without during battles.
It is interesting to note that throughout the eight years that Amaechi spent in office, Omehia’s name hardly surfaced at events or programmes despite the fact that they are related. He was like a man without history or relevance in the state’s history despite serving as a commissioner during the administration of Dr. Peter Odili. It was Wike who made it clear that despite the judicial debacle Omehia suffered, he once served the state as a governor, hence deserves the honour his administration accorded him. It was therefore a thing of joy when Wike anointed Fubara as his successor.
Some observers have pointed that the choice of Fubara was a move by the governor to honour the upland/ riverine argument for the governorship position. The move in itself would to a great extent reduce violence in the coming election. When Wike’s tenure ends on May 29, 2023, it would mark 16 straight years of continuous rule by the Ikwerre from the upland. Among people from the riverine, the extension or continuation of such political reality is their worst nightmare. Before the creation of the new Rivers State in 1991, the riverine held sway politically.
The carving out of Bayelsa from the old Rivers played a key role in whittling down the political influence of the riverine. Prior to the creation of Bayelsa, which is peopled by mainly Ijaw, the upland Ikwerre, where both Wike and Amaechi hail from lacked the cutting edge to fight their way to Government House, Port Harcourt.
Some claim that the electoral officers who took voting materials to the remotest areas that make up modern Bayelsa usually returned with votes that made nonsense of the votes in Port Harcourt and other neighbouring towns and communities, where the Ikwerre are dominant. Expectedly, in 1992 Chief Ada George was elected governor and remained in office till 1993 during the short-lived Third Republic. However, in 1999 an Ikwerre son, Chief Seargent Awuse, an accountant trained in the United Kingdom was the closest to what would have been the first governor from Ikwerre. Around that period, Awuse was one of the most popular politicians in the state and was inching closer to the governorship until the state’s political leaders settled for Odili.
The rest is history. But just when many thought that the Ikwerre would remain in political wilderness, it was the same Odili that changed the narrative for them when he backed Amaechi to succeed him in 2007. What some observers have, however, found disturbing is that the two Ikwerre sons (Amaechi and Wike) that led the state post Odili administration have ended up as political enemies.
So, while Wike will be aiming to sustain his winning streak through Fubara, having triumphed in the 2015 and 2019 governorship elections; Amaechi for his part, would want to secure his first major victory since 2011, when he was re-elected as governor. What appears to be very clear is that unlike the 2015 election that witnessed violence or the 2019 election in which security operatives hijacked the process, the 2023 election will be much more peaceful. And if the coming administration builds on that, then the state will be better off. (New Telegraph)
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