As the political climate in Rivers State gets turbo-charged, the Labour Party (LP)’s 2023 Governorship Candidate, Beatrice Itubo, has urged ex-governor Nyesom Wike to make peace with his successor, Siminalayi Fubara.
“I’m using this medium to call on the FCT minister to come back to his godson (Fubara) so that they can be able to mend their fences and move forward,” Itubo said on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
The LP candidate said the people of the state will be the most affected if the crisis is allowed to fester beyond what it is as they won’t enjoy the dividends of democracy.
Itubo, who has been in talks with Fubara of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said she withdrew her petition against the governor’s election at the Supreme Court to give peace a chance.
The LP candidate said she took the decision “because of the volatile nature, the tensed nature in Rivers State”.
“You can’t say you want peace and you are still in court,” she said, adding that “Sir Fubara is a democrat and pro-workers and that is why I am doing this.”
Rivers State has been a theatre of the absurd in the last three months with the state House of Assembly serving as the “boxing ring”. The rift between Wike and Fubara split lawmakers in the House with 27 of them decamping from the PDP to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a party in whose central government Wike currently serves as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
The feud also saw the emergence of parallel sittings, impeachment plot against the governor, demolition of the Assembly complex, and gale of resignations of pro-Wike commissioners in Fubara’s cabinet.
Though President Bola Tinubu and some elder statesmen have intervened in the crisis, there seems to be no end in sight to the political tsunami sweeping the oil-rich South-South state.
