Notwithstanding the political challenges he has faced, Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, who, along with his Deputy and members of the state House of Assembly, returned to office on September 18, 2025, following the expiration of the six-month-long state of emergency imposed on the state by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, still has significant opportunities to define his legacy for the remainder of his tenure. Effectively, Governor Fubara will govern in the first term for an aggregate period of three-and-a-half years. As the period of the state of emergency is deemed to be part of his tenure, there will be no legal or constitutional elongation to enable him make up four full years from the date of his swearing-in on May 29, 2023.
In the circumstance, one of the greater tasks confronting Fubara is to play catch-up and seek to recover part of his tenure lost to emergency rule that ran from March to September 2025. In other words, he has to move in double quick step to try to achieve what he would have done during the period of lull that the state of emergency was. Fostering reconciliation, peace, security, inclusion, and ramping up infrastructural projects and programmes are top priority tasks that should help reset the focus of his administration. Add to these citizens’ welfare, the push for industrialisation, and attraction of private sector investment, and it is obvious that the remainder of the tenure should be a very busy one.
Rather than kick-starting, Governor Fubara is now, in the post-emergency period, restarting his administration. This must necessarily involve an acceleration of ongoing projects, such as roads, bridges, and other critical social infrastructure, including such strategic projects as the Port Harcourt Ring Road, Trans Kalabari Road, and Buguma-Degema-Abonnema Road. During my recent interaction with the governor, I was thrilled to learn of his additional plans to begin to position Rivers State to maximise its potentials in the blue economy for which the state has been gifted by nature. One pathway to realising this ambition is by opening up the Andoni axis to the Atlantic Ocean, which would boost tourism. What is no less important in this respect is to seek and get the buy-in of stakeholders to ensure continuity beyond the tenure of the administration.
Perhaps the more urgent tasks at hand include the delivery of tangible progress in the urban renewal programme of Port Harcourt City, which should, in my view, be complemented with a dynamic environmental renewal and sustainability campaign that emphasises a clean and green Rivers State. The governor should feel encouraged by what has happened in Kigali, Rwanda, where, through deliberate urban renewal and greening, the capital has been transformed into a tourist destination and frequent host to important international retreats and conferences, with the economic spinoff that such events usually attract. The Nigeria Governors’ Forum found Kigali convenient and comfortable enough, hence the Forum held one of its retreats in that capital not long ago.
Considering the challenges of affordable accommodation not just in Rivers but in most other heavily urbanised cities and towns in Nigeria, it was comforting to learn from the governor that he is returning with dispatch to ensure the speedy delivery of 900 well-built urban houses. It is a project that is very dear to his heart. In addition, Rivers will be well-served with a systematic focus on human capital development, especially through improved healthcare and consistent investment in scholarships to deserving indigenes to pursue studies in medicine, engineering, and artificial intelligence. As Secretary to the Bayelsa State Government under the late Chief D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha as governor, I coordinated the overseas scholarship scheme for Bayelsa indigenes, and a couple of decades later, the beneficiaries of that programme form part of the state’s reliable workforce.
While, on the one hand, there is deserving commendation for the many intercessors who worked tirelessly to ensure the restoration of peace among the warring sides in the Rivers political maelstrom, we cannot, now that normal democratic governance has been restored, be unwary of conflict merchants, some of whom benefited, obviously, while the political crisis lasted. There are tale bearers; there are those who seek relevance, gossip-mongers, and plain idle minds who loiter around the corridors of power, where they concoct stories, fabricate scenarios, or just peddle plain lies by which they seek to stoke conflict or for them to be accepted into inner circles. I should add that such characters are perfect mood readers who know when and how to manipulate whomever they might wish to influence, usually for the manipulator’s own selfish agenda. These are the sorts of persons that the former adversaries should be wary of. When you lend your ears to conflict merchants, they will fill you with distractions and lure you into time-consuming and bruising battles.
How well Governor Fubara and members of the Rivers State House of Assembly choose to manage their relationship in the post-emergency rule era will be critical to the lasting peace that is a sine qua non for greater focus by the administration on higher goals in the interest of the people of Rivers State. Just before the state of emergency was imposed on the state in March 2025, the world saw the video footage of the scene when the governor tried to meet with the lawmakers at their temporary House in the legislators’ quarters but was denied access into the premises, and thereafter articles of impeachment were published by the lawmakers against the governor. That scene belongs to the past, but it was one of the unedifying spectacles of how the sour relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government in Rivers had deteriorated, almost irretrievably.
In one breath, it looked attractive that the Rivers State House of Assembly was not posturing as the lapdog of the executive branch. This contrasts sharply with the widespread experience in most states since 1999 where the legislature has either wilfully, or has been coerced to, surrender its rights and duties under the separation of powers and allowed itself to be virtually subsumed under the executive branch. In fact, it was this constitutionally unhealthy situation that was the rationale for the agitation for legislative autonomy. It will be recalled that, at first, some state Houses of Assembly voted against their own autonomy, preferring to be appendages, apparently on the dictates of their governors.
Therefore, seeing a House that could make useful meaning of separation of powers, and not be a mere rubber stamp, is a welcome development. But the House of Assembly must, and should, have a mind of its own. It cannot be a willing tool for the prosecution of proxy wars and still claim to be acting on the principles of separation of powers and in the public interest. Even then, what ought to guide the mind, spirit, and operation of the legislature is the constitutional mandate broadly spelt out in section 4, sub-sections 6 and 7 of the 1999 Constitution as amended. The constitution does not envisage ruinous gridlock, conflict, and lack of cooperation between and among the tiers of government. Carefully examined, the constitutional provision requiring the state legislature to make laws for the “peace, order and good government of the State or any part thereof…” is the ultimate guiding principle for lawmakers. That mandate envisages the House as partner with the Executive. In the post-state of emergency period, Rivers lawmakers should constantly remind themselves of this constitutional prescription.
I also hope that members of the Rivers House of Assembly are keenly aware that there are spectators out there who are eagerly awaiting the reopening of the theatre of conflict between the lawmakers and Governor Fubara. However, there is no doubt that, given a choice between entertaining outsiders with endless spats involving the House and the Executive, and working earnestly for the interest of the generality of Rivers people, the lawmakers would shun any invitation to be theatre players and instead focus on the serious business of governance that significantly enhances the state’s long-term development.
Yet, while focused on achieving the deliverables as the raison d’etre for his election into office in the first place, Governor Fubara must equally, and adroitly too, manage the politics of the state. He is not an appointee. He was duly elected. And for that to have happened, structures were created and then mobilised in support of his electoral ambition. No doubt, in political families, there are often contending camps. However, Governor Fubara’s political maturity will have been enhanced since 2023 when he came into office and more especially when he was suspended from office during the six-month-long state of emergency. He should have his own survival and winning formula. But he must also reckon that, no matter the provocation or the logic offered by unofficial advisers, he should never set fire to his own political family. If he were ever to make mistake, scavengers would troop in to raid the political family house, even before fire-fighting commences.
• Prof. Azaiki, OON, a former Secretary to the Bayelsa State Government, was in the House of Representatives from 2019 to 2023.
