By. Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq.
The Rivers State House of Assembly has again opened the door that leads to the most dramatic room in Nigerian politics, impeachment. A notice of alleged gross misconduct has been laid against Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his deputy, and the process has been formally set in motion. When a legislature reaches for Section 188, it is rarely just law in motion. It is power announcing itself, and daring everyone else to respond.
Taken together with what I have said about Wike before, this is an opportunity to quickly test who is more formidable. Not by speeches, not by television confidence, not by online supporters, but by outcomes. Rivers is where reputations are either confirmed or corrected, because the state does not reward weakness, and it does not forgive hesitation. The allegations being read out are weighty, including claims around spending tax payers money without budget approval, the demolition of the Assembly complex, extra budgetary spending and withholding funds. Whether these claims are proven or contested, the political message is clear. The lawmakers are saying they are ready to go all the way.
This crisis is being described as a Rivers matter, but it has the capacity to embarrass the ruling environment at the centre, because it exposes a truth many people try to dress up as strategy. It shows that party alliances in Nigeria are often less about shared ideology and more about shared convenience. When convenience is the glue, conflict is always one disagreement away. Rivers is therefore not just a local fight, it is a mirror, and what it reflects can make even powerful people uncomfortable.
It also comes at a time when the tension between Wike and some voices within the APC has become public. The APC National Secretary, Ajibola Basiru, has openly told Wike to resign his ministerial position and face what he called an obsession with Rivers politics. That statement is not just insult, it is boundary drawing. It is the party trying to remind an ally that influence has limits, and that the party structure still wants to look like the owner of its own house. Wike’s kind of politics does not naturally accept boundaries, and Rivers is the arena where boundaries are either enforced or broken.
Still, even if Fubara survives this impeachment attempt, the world should not pretend that survival automatically makes him the good man in the story. Fubara came into power through a succession arrangement that was widely understood as Wike’s project, and his rise from the Rivers civil service into the governorship was part of that political design. When a man is drafted from the bureaucracy into elective power by the magnanimity of a political benefactor, the least he owes the system is restraint. If the agreement was unbearable, the honourable path was to renegotiate with maturity, or to step aside with dignity, not to turn the entire state into a theatre of permanent war.
Rivers has already lived through the cost of this feud. There was the earlier reconciliation brokered by President Tinubu when the crisis first threatened governance, and yet the conflict returned, louder and more dangerous. Eventually, the matter escalated into a rare constitutional intervention, a state of emergency was declared in March 2025, and the governor, his deputy, and lawmakers were suspended for six months before the emergency rule was lifted and democratic governance restored in September 2025. That kind of episode is supposed to reset everyone’s thinking. After such an emergency period, politics demands genuine peace, not performative peace. Rivers is too strategic and too combustible to be governed like a personal grudge.
This is why the question of how Fubara will end cannot be separated from the bigger contest behind him. The power clash is not only Fubara versus the Assembly. It is also Wike versus the competing forces around the centre, the President’s boys versus Wike, the Villa’s calculations versus Wike’s confidence. If the President stands firmly with Wike, Wike ends as a happy man, and he stamps authority in Rivers in a way that will echo beyond the state. If the President supports the opposing camp, Wike risks humiliation, and that would be the day his aura begins to leak. If the President plays neutral, then Fubara is the one in the most danger, because neutrality in a knife fight is not protection, it is permission for the stronger structure to finish the job.
The Tinubu many Nigerians have watched for decades is a master of the game. He will choose stability, he will choose the option that preserves the centre, and he will avoid wasting political capital where patience can deliver the same result. In a situation like Rivers, that instinct often favours Wike or strategic neutrality. And in either scenario, Fubara’s position becomes fragile, because his greatest weakness is not only the Assembly. It is trust. In politics, when a man is perceived as difficult to trust, even his victories become temporary, because every stakeholder begins to prepare for the next betrayal.
Fubara also carries a personal shadow that makes this fight even more dangerous for him. In May 2022, when he was Rivers State Accountant General, the EFCC declared him wanted over an alleged N435 billion fraud, and the matter became a major public controversy at the time. Years later, he argued that he acted on approvals as accountant general and that he was not frightened by the allegations. The point is not to convict him in an essay. The point is that politics is cruel, and old files have a way of returning the moment immunity no longer stands between a man and his enemies. A governor fighting for survival must remember that losing office is not always just an exit, it can be the beginning of a different kind of battle.
So how will Fubara end. If the Assembly sustains momentum and the centre decides it is tired, he can end through removal. If the process becomes a bargaining chip, he can end through a settlement that leaves him with the title but strips him of real authority. If he survives, he can still end as a wounded figure, a governor who stayed in power but never truly governed in peace. And if he wins decisively, he will not just survive, he will redraw the power map of Rivers in a way that humiliates those who doubted him.
A final word is necessary because this is no longer only about Rivers, it is about reputations. I honestly wish Wike well in this new voyage. He must not lose, because if he loses, his end will begin to look charted, and the myth that protects him will start to collapse in public. My uncle, Senator Ajibola Basiru, the APC National Secretary, must not lose the moral and institutional battle he has started with Wike, because if Wike wins in Rivers and wins at the centre, he will mock the hell out of those who tried to shrink him. The Villa side too must not lose, because if the President’s boys are defeated in Rivers, it will announce that the centre can be pressured, and that message is dangerous in any presidency.
And to Fubara, this crisis is now personal, and it is partly self made. If he does not want his story to end in regret, then he must fight like a man who understands what is at stake, and he must use every lawful political and legal instrument available, negotiation, strategy, discipline, alliances, and restraint. Because in Rivers, losers do not only lose office, they lose the right to write their own ending.
May God see Rivers through.
Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq is a Legal Practitioner.
