Politics
Can Fubara survive second impeachment scare in Rivers?
For the second time in three years, the axe of impeachment has dangled over the Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara. On October 30th, 2023, the House of Assembly, led by Speaker Martins Amaewhule, began a process of removing Fubara, a few hours after the hallowed chamber of the Assembly was attacked by unknown arsonists.
The political disturbances caused by a worrisome chain of events that threatened lives and property and critical national assets, including oil installations, compelled President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in Rivers.
The six-month emergency rule anchored by a former Chief of Naval Staff, Vice-Admiral Ibok Ete Ibas (retd), saved Fubara’s government and restored peace in the state. The governor, in most of his public outings, expressed gratitude to President Tinubu for rescuing him.
When he eventually resumed office on September 18th, 2025, after the emergency rule, Fubara wore the message of peace as his garment. His disposition after the emergency rule gave everyone in the state the impression that the worst was over. Stakeholders believed that peace had come to stay at last.
How fresh crisis began
But no sooner had the governor settled down for governance than a fresh crisis crept into the state. It started subtly with an unusual silence and later began to loom large.
First, the House of Assembly carpeted the governor over what it described as the rot in the educational sector. The report of its Committee on Education was damning. The committee accused the governor of neglecting the sector. In fact, the lawmakers in a plenary wondered why the governor abandoned the sector despite inheriting N600bn left in the treasury of the state by Ibas.
Lamenting the development, Amaewhule said, “Is it that we don’t have funds in the state? Of course we have! At the time the administrator, Ibas, was leaving, he left over N600 billion in the accounts of Rivers State. Over N600 billion by October, can’t such funds be used to remedy the situation in our schools?”
Fubara replied to Amaewhule and said that improving the poor state of education in Rivers was a top priority of his administration. He announced that the sector would receive the largest allocation in the 2026 budget.
He admitted that many schools across the state were in bad shape, but stressed that the decay did not happen overnight.
According to him, the deterioration predated his government and was one of the major issues used by opponents during the 2023 election campaigns.
Indeed, the initial outburst by the House of Assembly was an expose that things were beginning to fall apart and the centre was gradually caving in again. The governor’s later response further gave credence to the emerging cracks.
In his recent project inauguration, Fubara seized the opportunity to address some issues, which expanded the coast of the crisis. His explanation showed that the executive and the legislature were not working together.
Though he declared that he had no personal problem with the House of Assembly members, the governor claimed that he had not been able to meet with the lawmakers because the arrangement for such a gathering had yet to be made by the concerned leaders.
Fubara averred that the leader of the state’s Elders’ Council, Chief Ferdinand Anabraba, could attest to the many failed efforts he had made to meet with the lawmakers. In fact, the governor particularly said that the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Chief Nyesom Wike, had not made the necessary arrangements for the meeting.
He said: “I have made every effort; I believe that the leadership of the State Elders Council, led by Chief Ferdinand Anabraba can attest to this. I have made every effort to meet with them, and the arrangement wasn’t for me to call them directly. It was for our leader, the Minister, to arrange the meeting, and till now that meeting has not been fixed.
“So when people go about saying I don’t want to meet with them or that I don’t want to meet their demands, that is not true. I don’t have any reason to do that.
I personally said whatever their need is, I am ready to meet it so that we can have peace in the State.
“So, please, I am saying it here. Whoever is telling you that I don’t want to meet with the members of the State House of Assembly is not true. I met with our leaders, and they said they will arrange a meeting. I don’t want to go behind them so that it won’t look like going behind is to divide the house. I am a gentleman and very principled. That is the reason I am saying it here.”
However, Fubara’s statement angered Amaewhule, who, without mincing words, described the governor as a liar. Amaewhule claimed that the lawmakers met with the governor many times after the emergency rule, but that Fubara had refused to implement the decisions reached at the peace gathering.
He recalled that Wike arranged a meeting between the 27 members of the House and the governor at the Minister’s official residence in Abuja.
He also remembered that another meeting was arranged by Wike involving members of the Elders Council, some lawmakers and the governor at the residence of Anabraba.
Amaewhule recalled that in one of the meetings between the governor and the lawmakers, Fubara told them that he would not present any other appropriation bill to the assembly.
He lamented that the assembly was in the dark about the actions of the governor and that Fubara had been spending money without the approval of the lawmakers.
He said: “Emergency rule was declared, and after the emergency rule, we asked the governor to bring his budget so we could take care of all he intended to do. We asked him to present his budget. In 2024, he spent without appropriation. In 2025, he was spending. After the emergency, we had a meeting, and we asked him to bring his budget.
“Here, in that meeting, the governor told us blatantly that he was not going to bring the budget. God is my witness. I shouldn’t have brought all these because we are trying to see how we can mend fences. We kept mum, hoping the governor would do the right thing.
“From September, the governor has been spending without our approval. He has been awarding contracts to his cronies, especially those who masterminded the burning of the Rivers State House of Assembly. They are mocking us that they have been rewarded for burning the Rivers House of Assembly.
“The governor does not seek the approval of the Rivers Assembly. He has been spending money from his back pocket. The governor’s outburst is the reason for this conference. We need to set the record straight. The Minister of the FCT means well for Rivers State. He wants peace and wants the state to move forward.
“The Minister summoned all the members of the State House of Assembly, and 27 of us were present in that meeting in the official residence of the Minister in Abuja. The governor sat with us, and we had a meeting with him. We were shocked to hear the governor say that no meeting had been called.
“Let us also inform Rivers people that after the emergency rule, the FCT minister also caused a meeting to take place at the residence of Chief Anabraba in GRA Port Harcourt.
“We had the meeting of the Elders’ Council, and in that meeting, some members were present. How many meetings does the governor want the FCT minister to call for him to do the needful? Is it 100? We didn’t want to do this press conference because we have resolved following the interventions of Mr President to sheathe our swords to allow peace to reign.
“We didn’t want to speak to the press so as not to heat the polity. We kept quiet even when he refused to bring his appropriation bill”.
Amaewhule said as part of their investigations about what transpired during the emergency rule, they discovered that the outgone Rivers Administrator left a whopping N600bn in the accounts of Rivers State.
He said perhaps the governor’s anger was that the House Committee on Education submitted a report that highlighted the collapse of educational infrastructures in the state under Fubara.
Amaewhule said: “Part of what we have found out that transpired during the emergency rule is that the outgone administrator left over N600bn in the account of Rivers State. The governor has been boasting about how he will use the funds to divide the assembly and buy the members.
“The governor needs to know that members of the assembly are not for sale. The 27 of us remain committed to the dreams and aspirations of the people and to our constituents. We are prepared to serve Rivers and to do the needful.
“The governor’s outburst disparaging the FCT minister will not help him. The governor does not need to react in a reactionary way just because of the report of the House Committee on Education. The governor should know that as a governor, he ought to be a leader. At the moment he is failing.
“He doesn’t want to be a leader. His outburst does not show him as a leader. He is sending his attack dogs to insult us on social media. This will not help him. He gives them money everyday to insult us. It will not help him. All those things are not in the best interest of Rivers.
“He needs to show leadership. We are debunking the governor’s assertions. We have been meeting with him, but he has failed to keep to the terms. He doesn’t want to keep to the terms. But we will remain calm”.
The governor was compelled to explain the N600bn he inherited from Ibas. He said: “I want to say to the world that when we left during the emergency rule, our records are there. We left over N300bn, and when we came back, we met about N600bn. Every penny that we are spending the records are there, and evidence of it will be shown between now and the next six months.
“So, there is no issue with what we are doing with our money, or with the money we met. At least nobody can take away my sincerity. I am not associated with anything that has to do with fraudulent acts”.
The main problem
The brickbats opened a can of fresh political wounds, revealing reasons behind the uprising. It was all about failures to keep agreements. The agreements that facilitated the truce had been breached. During one of his visits to local government areas, Wike accused Fubara of flouting the terms of the peace pact. The Minister said the agreement was entered into under the supervision of President Tinubu. He vowed to disclose the terms of the agreement.
Though there has not been an official confirmation of the agreement the governor entered into with the camp of Wike, sources disclosed that Fubara agreed to concede the local government areas to his boss, allowing Wike to produce all the chairmen and councillors of the 23 local government areas. He was said to have agreed that he would not seek a second term and that he would present a supplementary budget to complement the 2025 Budget passed for the state under Ibas by the National Assembly.
The governor was said to have agreed that he would drop Dr. Tammy Danagogo as the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) and reinstate Ohna Sergeant Chidi Awuse as the Chairman of Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers, as well as drop Edison Ehie as his Chief of Staff, among others.
The lawmakers and members of the Wike political camp are accusing the governor of being a serial violator of agreements. They believed that Fubara could no longer be trusted. They wondered why the governor was fond of entering into agreements that he was not willing to fulfil. An official of the Rivers State House of Assembly, who spoke in confidence, said the governor was neither coerced nor persuaded to enter into the agreements that returned him to power after the emergency rule.
The source said: “When he discovered that if he failed to settle with Wike and the lawmakers, the President might extend the emergency rule, the governor went alone to meet with the lawmakers and Wike. He was the one who proposed most of the conditions in the agreement. He told them he was only interested in completing his first tenure.
“He also said they should produce all the local government chairmen and councillors. He begged them and vowed that he would keep the terms of the agreement. He even asked the Minister to nominate his commissioners. But the Minister declined the offer and told him to nominate members of his cabinet, but that the assembly would dutifully screen the nominees.
“It was after that meeting that they all went to see the President, where they told President Bola Tinubu all that they agreed. The President advised the governor on the need to keep the terms of the agreement and also told him about his experience in Lagos. So, nobody forced Governor Fubara to enter into the agreement.
“Immediately, he was reinstated, the governor started singing another song. In one of the meetings he held with the lawmakers, they asked him to bring a supplementary budget to facilitate the correction of some of the financial mistakes he made. He bluntly told them that he would not do anything like that.
“The governor’s intention was to operate the 2025 budget approved for the state by the National Assembly, taking advantage of the extra six months window allowed by the constitution, and that will be close to an election period when all attention will shift from governance to election. The lawmakers can no longer trust him.”
Some stakeholders insisted that Fubara should clarify the terms of the truce. Robinson Ewor, a factional Caretaker Committee Chairman of the PDP in the state, appealed to the governor to disclose the agreement to Rivers people.
Ewor said: “In all the places the FCT Minister visited and made speeches, he said agreements were reached before the lifting of the state of emergency and before President Tinubu.
“One of the things he highlighted is that the governor agreed before the President not to run for a second term. The governor agreed that he would drop Tammy Danagogo as the Secretary to the State Government. Ordinarily, these issues wouldn’t have bothered us because he is no longer a member of the PDP.
“But because we are Rivers people, we elected him and gave him a mandate for a period of four years, all his actions directly or indirectly affect us as a people. It is based on this that we demand that the governor should come out clean and tell Rivers all the things they agreed before the state of emergency was lifted”.
But Fubara has remained mute, failing to speak on the agreements he reached with the lawmakers and the Minister.
The anger of the lawmakers boiled over, compelling them to initiate a fresh move to remove the governor. The Speaker Amaewhule-led House of Assembly, in a televised sitting, resolved to serve a notice of impeachment on the governor and his deputy, Prof. Ngozi Odu. The House sent two documents containing allegations of gross misconduct to Fubara and his deputy. The lawmakers gave them seven days to respond to the accusations in line with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
Can Fubara survive another impeachment move?
Most of the allegations contained in the notice that was recently served on the governor bordered on financial recklessness; spending from the consolidated revenue without recourse to the approval of the House of Assembly. The lawmakers cited many examples of such expenditures. But most people believe that the Amaewhule’s House may find it difficult to remove the governor.
First, Fubara’s smart move to the APC with his followers would surely slow down any attempt to bundle him out of office. Already, APC governors and the party’s National Working Committee were said to have rallied round the governor. As one of theirs, they were said to be doing everything possible to protect the governor. Besides, the lawmakers and loyalists of the FCT Minister are members of the same party as Fubara, while their principal, Wike, is a leader of the opposition PDP. It was learnt that the NWC was making sure that the issues were settled internally within the party.
Besides, it was further gathered that President Tinubu, who has been playing a father figure in the Rivers crisis was not disposed to impeachment. The President was said to have intervened to ensure that the impeachment notice was withdrawn by the lawmakers. But the President reportedly insisted that the governor must honour the agreement as a precondition for the withdrawal of the impeachment notice.
Signs that the parties were beginning to mend their fences emerged following the moves by some state lawmakers to appeal to their colleagues to temper justice with mercy.
The Minority Leader of the House, Sylvanus Nwankwo and the member representing Degema Constituency, Peter Abbey, were the first to appeal.
Sylvanus claimed that after a plethora of calls and pleas from various elders and leaders within and outside the state, there was a need to seek an amicable resolution of the matter.
While admitting that Fubara allegedly violated some aspects of the constitution, Sylvanus said the issues could still be handled outside the impeachment process.
He said: “You are all aware that the Rivers State House of Assembly issued a notice of impeachment on the governor and his deputy. But we are appealing to our fellow colleagues to temper justice with mercy.
“Let us see how we can solve this matter outside of impeachment proceedings. We are appealing to the conscience of our fellow colleagues, having listened to many pleas, calls from our elders and leaders both within and outside the state, begging for leniency.
“We are begging our colleagues to reconsider our steps and see how this matter can be resolved amicably, even though the governor and the deputy governor had infringed the constitution”.
Abbey, on his part, urged Fubara to henceforth stop taking steps that could lead to the violation of any part of the Constitution to facilitate the resolution of the matter.
He said: “The governor has infringed on parts of the Constitution. But we are human beings, and we want to plead with our colleagues to please reconsider. You don’t swing an axe the way you raise it. But the governor must also take steps not to infringe further on the constitution to bring an amicable solution”.
Two female members of the House, Barile Nwakoh, representing Khana Constituency I, and Emilia Amadi, representing Wike’s Obio/Akpor Constituency II, made a similar appeal.
The legislators said that though the governor and his deputy might have breached the constitution, they were moved by pressure from respected leaders and stakeholders to calm down for an amicable resolution of the matter.
For instance, the two female lawmakers said: “One of the significance of the move by the lawmakers was that none of them denounced their signatories to the impeachment notice. They unanimously indicted the governor but vehemently called for a political solution instead of the outright removal of Fubara.
“The governor has seriously abandoned the agreement entered into in the past with the supervision of Mr President in a bid to find a lasting solution to the constitutional infractions.
“This cast serious doubts on why any person should trust him. However, we have been inundated with calls from some of our leaders and Rivers people begging that we seek a political solution to this problem created by the governor and his deputy.
“We, hereby, state our willingness to look at a political solution rather than an outright removal of the duo. We call our members to also consider this approach. We did not say this as a sign of weakness but because we have forgiving hearts and as mothers”.
In fact, other interventions further mounted heavy pressure on the lawmakers to seek other ways of resolving the crisis. Some prominent groups led by respected leaders, such as the Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and the Rivers State Council of Traditional Rulers, immediately set up a committee comprising famous leaders to wade into the crisis.
Permanent solution
Evidently, it seems a truce is being brokered to avert the impeachment. The House was supposed to reconvene on Thursday to act on the impeachment notice, but the lawmakers failed to do so following feelers that negotiations were still on to broker a fresh truce.
But stakeholders appealed to the governor to do everything within his power to find a way to work with the legislature. They advised that parties to agreements must learn to honour them or renegotiate their terms to avert a crisis.
While commending the governor for meeting some of the terms, they called on him to fulfil the rest and amicably renegotiate them to ensure permanent peace in the state. Observers also called on members of the House of Assembly to soft-pedal and embrace dialogue as a veritable tool for resolving crises.
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