Oct 5: Fubara In Crucial Democratic Test, Supporters Confused

Voters in Rivers State will go to the polls on Saturday, October 5th to elect local government chairmen and councillors for the 23 local government areas of the state in what is the first democratic test for the Governor of Rivers State. Mr. Siminalayi Fubara.
While the date of the election draws close, there is still confusion among the supporters of the governor as to the political party and the candidates that he had endorsed for the elections. Many of his supporters and members of the Simplified Movement that had expected the governor to tell them where to go had to move to some unknown parties to get nomination before they are cut off by the nomination deadlines of the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission.
The offices of the chairmen and councilors became vacant on June 18th, 2024 when the tenure of the immediate past Chairmen expired. However the 27-member faction of the Rivers State House of Assembly under the speakership of Hon. Martin Amaewhule, passed an amendment to the Rivers State Local Government Law 2012 to extend the tenure of the past Chairmen and councilors by six months.
Governor Fubara ignored the tenure extension by the Amaewhule-led faction of the house of assembly and submitted a list of nominees of Chairmen and members of the caretaker committees of the 23 local governments to the three-man faction of the House of Assembly under the speakership of Hon. Victor Oko-Jumbo for approval on 18th June.
The list of nominees was approved the same day and the new caretaker committee chairmen were sworn in by Governor Fubara. The Chairmen went back to their local government areas to inaugurate the other members of the caretaker committees.
However the new caretaker committees could not move into their offices because the police sealed off all the local governments after clashes were recorded between supporters of the outgoing council chairmen and those of the incoming chairmen.
Long after the clashes ended, the police refused to leave the council gates. Commissioner of Police, Tunji Disu, said the police were at the local government secretariats to prevent breakdown in law and order and would not leave until all the cases in court involving the local governments in the state were disposed of.
Shortly after the new caretaker committees were inaugurated, the Supreme Court issued a judgment affirming the financial and democratic autonomy of the local governments. The import of the judgment in the local government autonomy case that was filed by the Federal Attorney-General was that local governments would no longer be run by unelected officers. But an interpretation of the judgment gave room for unelected local governments as of the time of the judgment to continue in office until new elections are held to fill the positions.
But a peculiar case of Rivers State in the coming local government election is the apparent non-participation of the two major political parties in the election. The parties are the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC).
This is due largely to the disputed leaderships of the parties in the state.
Governor Fubara, who was elected on the platform of the PDP, lost control of the structure of the party in the state after he fell out with the former governor, Chief Nyesom Wike, who wields control over the state and the national working committees of the party. Wike also took a stake in the state’s leadership of the APC, temporarily wresting it from the control of his predecessor, Rotimi Amaechi.
With the matters relating to the leaderships of the two parties in court, Governor Fubara had to work with an amorphous organization called the Simplified Movement made up of aggrieved members of the APC, PDP and other politicians wishing to use the organization to achieve political ends.
As the local government elections approached, it became difficult to know which political party the government would use to support candidates in the elections. With just about two weeks to the elections, there was still confusion among his supporters with respect to which party they would use to contest the local government election. Many people had touted the Action Peoples Party, whose offices in Port Harcourt had been attacked twice within two weeks.
With no word coming from Government House on where the governor was going, many of his supporters started trooping into other political parties like Zenith Labour Party, Social Democratic Party, APP and others to pick up nominations while still adorning his picture and the symbol of the Simplified Movement.
In the lacuna created by the governor’s silence, some principal officers of the state government, particularly the Chief of Staff, Hon. Edision Ehie, and the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Hon. Victor Oko-Jumbo, started paying visits to local government areas and making underground endorsements.
Which party the governor would eventually pitch his tent with or endorse candidates for remained guesswork. Governor Fubara himself had said previously that he was not desperate about political power and would not make desperate efforts to retain it. It was to this position that the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, recently asked him to step aside as governor.