Leloonu Nwibubasa, the former Rivers State Commissioner for Employment and Empowerment, has criticized the Abuja meeting with President Bola Tinubu, where it was claimed that suspended members of the State House of Assembly, Sim Fubara, the suspended governor, and Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), had decided to put an end to their political disagreements.
According to reports, Nwibubasa criticized Fubara in an interview on Arise Television for going to the meeting by himself without a representative from a balanced group, while all the stakeholders supported Wike.
“A more balanced delegation would be preferable,” he said, adding that Fubara traveled to Abuja as an individual and not as a representative of Rivers State’s interests as a whole.
Nwibubasa maintained that unless the fundamental problems of political authority and state economic management are resolved, real peace cannot be attained.
“You cannot discuss peace without addressing equity,” he stated. When you are not discussing fairness, you cannot discuss peace. A more balanced delegation should have been there if he represented Rivers State’s wishes; yet, that was a concession rather than a reconciliation.
“A durable and long-lasting peace cannot be claimed to have been attained unless equality and justice are established. The goal of this entire conflict has always been to force a man to satisfy the desires of one individual.
Real progress in Rivers State is impossible, Nwibubasa said, if the meeting’s conclusion only restores the political status quo in which Wike maintains de facto authority.
“If the reconciliation is just for everyone to go back and bow before the same man, then we have gone back to the status quo,” he said. Peace cannot be achieved by that.
“Rivers State will not advance until we have a leader who has the guts to take risks, the will to be different, and not the timidity to keep things the same.”
Read Also: Inside APC’s Power Game: Kwankwaso’s Comeback and the Ganduje-Shettima Fallout
The removal of the unofficial state of emergency may be the only immediate advantage of the current system, according to Nwibubasa.
He said that there has always been a 2027 undercurrent to the entire problem and bemoaned the seeming loss of Governor Fubara’s early battle to safeguard the state’s resources.
He went on to say, “The same gladiators will return. and keep making that cow in Rivers State so they can milk it for themselves.
“If he is unable to accomplish that at this time, it merely indicates that he has failed and that things will return to how they were. The FCT minister’s actions today are all intended to win over Mr. President and demonstrate that he has something valuable to contribute in 2027.
