Rivers Crisis: “Dey your dey…nobody worry nobody” -By Rotimi Fasan

The student seems to have learned a lot at the feet of his master. This seems to be the case between Nyesom Wike, the immediate past governor of Rivers State, and his protege, the current governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara. Until a few weeks ago, it didn’t look as if anything could go wrong or come between the two men. They were five and six as we would say in this part of the world. While Wike ruled the roost as governor, Fubara towed his step as his Accountant-General, his Man-Friday and ultmate keeper of the purse.

On his own, Fubara would probably never have dreamed of being governor. It didn’t look like he was made of the same stuff as the men that have had the good or bad fortune (depending on how you see it) of leading Rivers state as governor. But, perhaps, nothing defines any as innately constituted of the materials or stuff by which those who governed Rivers were made. After all said, power or the confernment of it is what makes any man what they are or become. It could transform a coward into a killer and make a lion out of a cat. Yet, it needs be said that the apparent disloyalty that is at the heart of the Wike-Fubara imbroglio today has been the hallmark of politics in Rivers State in the last two decades of civilian governance.

The patronage system on which the wheel of civilian governance has been turning in the state and through which aspirants are annointed into the position of governor is largely a mechanism for intrigues, disloyalty and scant regard for integrity. It was why Rotimi Amaechi could spit in the face of Peter Odili and turn his back to him without a blink. It would be why Nyesom Wike himself could become the arch enemy of Rotimi Amaechi after years of saying Yes Sir to every one of his words. Having licked Wike’s spittle, turned and rolled on the floor for him, Siminalayi Fubara now has the sword in his hand and, as the Yoruba would say, he could now demand to know who killed his father and set out to avenge his death.

Fubara who once would crawl wherever Wike could be found now wants to be left alone. It’s time to mind his business while he expects Wike to do the same. He is singing a new song. “Dey your dey, make I dey my dey” is the latest composition, the new song in Port-Harcourt. In full, the chorus is quite catchy and for that very reason mnemonic and easy to commit to memory: “Dey your dey/Make I dey my dey/Dey your dey o/ Nobody worry nobody”. It is the product of the itinerant live band that has suddenly emerged to accompany Fubara wherever he goes in Rivers state. It is a page straight out of Wike’s play book, a carry-over from his years as governor, especially in the last two years of his tenure.

Whenever and wherever the former governor had a new project to commission (and there were quite a few of them for which he invited notable politicians across party lines), he went with his live band that sang songs meant to taunt his political adversaries. One of the more memorable songs from the band’s repertoire goes this way: “As e dey sweet us/ E dey pain dem/ As e dey pain dem/Omo e dey sweet us”. The band performs in a manner that suggests not a few of them must be familiar with the ways of the Kegites (members of the Palmwine Drinkers club) if not actually members themselves.

Only six months ago, the political programme that Wike midwifed on behalf of Fubara led to his emergence as governor of the state. He was Wike’s candidate, self-chosen and piggy-backed through the campaigns until he won and was sworn in as governor. Fubara never had to take on any of his challengers at any time. Such had Wike to contend with. Things stayed this way for the next few months. Around October, there were hints things were not what they appeared like in the political family Wike had built in Rivers while he sevred as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory in the APC-led government of President Bola Tinubu.

It wasn’t long before the rumblings boiled over and it emerged that the teacher and his pupil were at daggers drawn. It all seemed too soon and too sudden. The disagreement according to Wike was that Fubara had been playing at handing over the political “legacy” he left behind in Rivers to his enemies. He would have none of that, he warned. The President, a beneficiary of Wike’s enstrangment from the PDP fold, stepped in to put out the fire raging betwen these two men who pledged allegiance to him as president against the interest of their own party. The matter was resolved as a father and son tiff and both men sheated their swords. Beneath, however, a storm raged. It blew into the open over a week ago when 27 of 32 legislators in the state, all loyalists of Wike, decamped from the PDP to the governing APC.

Fubara didn’t wait to second guess the decampees. He had a sense of what their abandonment of their party meant and what danger that spelled for him. He preempted their next action, a possible attempt at impeaching him, and moved to get an ex-parte motion from a High Court preventing the removal of the factional Speaker of the House, the one loyal to him. He followed this with the most outrageous and audacious action he has so far taken, at par with his presentation and succesful passage of the Appropriation Bill with just four members seated in the Government House. He had by this time sent bulldozers, several at once, to level to rubble the State House of Assembly that had much earlier in the fight between him and Wike, been fire-bombed. No less than 10 commissioners have so far resigned their appointment in solidarity with Wike.

The battle, a clear war of personal interests, has taken on an ethnic colouration between Wike’s people and Fubara’s people and no lasting resolution seems in sight. Late evening on Monday this week, Siminalayi Fubara, Peter Odili, and Nyesom Wike were in a closed door meeting with President Tinubu. They emerged from the meeting with a resolution that matters revert to status quo ante bellum. It’s anybody’s guess what could come out of this. What peace can there be between Fubara, the 27 legislators and the four others? Now Fubara has stared Wike in the face, can he still defer to him? Can a body scarred by a wound heal to its original state again?