Power Belongs To The People, But In Rivers, It Belongs To Wike -By Isaac Asabor

In any functional democracy, the mandate belongs to the electorate. However, the political reality in Rivers State tells a different story. Two years into Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s administration, one name remains the final authority on every major decision: Nyesom Wike. The current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) may have left the governorship, but the levers of control never left his hands. What exists in Rivers today is not a government of the people, but a political fiefdom where loyalty to Wike is the ultimate currency.

The evidence is overwhelming. When the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission (RSIEC) conducted local government elections after the end of emergency rule, Wike’s loyalists swept the polls. Wike himself boasted of having “taken over the political structure in the 23 local government areas” of the state. “We have taken over the local government council,” he declared to supporters in Andoni Local Government Area. This is not the language of a former governor offering advice, it is the claim of a viceroy asserting dominion.

Wike has openly declared that no candidate can win an election in Rivers State without the backing of his political camp. “No candidate can win an election in Rivers State without the backing of my political camp,” he reiterated during an end-of-year media chat. He insisted that his supporters control the local government and ward structures across the state. In a democracy, the ballot box is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter. In Rivers, Wike is the ultimate arbiter.

The crisis that erupted between Wike and his handpicked successor, Governor Fubara, laid bare this uncomfortable truth. The discord, which began in October 2023, was not over policy disagreements or ideological differences. It was, as Governor Fubara himself admitted, about one thing: “power and control.” When a protégé attempts to govern without the godfather’s permission, the result is political paralysis, institutional collapse, and ultimately a six-month state of emergency that suspended the governor, his deputy, and the entire state House of Assembly.

What is truly alarming is that Wike’s dominance has transcended party boundaries. When 16 lawmakers loyal to Wike defected to the All-Progressives Congress (APC), a party Wike is not even a member of, it was not a victory for the ruling party. As pundits have argued, it was “more evidence that Wike had successfully transplanted his structure into the ruling party.” The Minister remains formally in the PDP, yet he commands loyalty across the aisle. In Rivers, Wike has rendered political parties irrelevant.

More evidential in this context is that in the build-up to the 2026/2027 Rivers State gubernatorial cycle, Wike is playing a strategic godfather role across both major parties to maintain his political grip. The key aspirants who have emerged under this arrangement are Hon. Kingsley Ogundu Chinda, the minority leader of the House of Representatives. He recently emerged as the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), after securing the party’s ticket. He unarguably enjoyed a smooth path to securing the ticket following the withdrawal of other aspirants, including incumbent Governor Siminalayi Fubara.

In a similar vein, Sam Ejekwu, a former Rivers State Commissioner for Transport and close ally of Wike, was selected as the consensus candidate for the Peoples Democratic party’s faction aligned with the FCT Minister.

These parallel endorsements are designed to ensure that the FCT Minister maintains absolute control over the political structure in Rivers State regardless of which party takes office.

In fact, the humiliation of Governor Fubara has been methodical and complete. After a peace agreement brokered by President Tinubu, the governor was forced to withdraw his re-election ambition. Wike revealed that the arrangement was clear: the impeachment process against Fubara would be dropped on the condition that he would not seek a second term. The governor initially reneged by purchasing nomination forms, only to withdraw under pressure. Wike mocked him publicly: “He ought not to have collected the form, because the agreement was reached that the impeachment should be dropped, while he should also not talk about a second tenure.” A sitting governor reduced to taking orders from his predecessor, and ridiculed for his defiance, is a chilling spectacle.

But the most recent twist in this sordid saga reveals the full extent of Wike’s iron grip. In recent weeks, reports emerged that Governor Fubara had quietly explored the possibility of running for a second term, not on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), under which he was originally elected, but on the ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC). This was seen as a desperate gambit to escape Wike’s stranglehold on the PDP structure in Rivers. However, Wike swiftly and brutally shut down that option. According to multiple sources and corroborated by public statements, Wike issued a direct threat: if Fubara dared to pick the nomination form of any other party, including the APC, and managed to win re-election on that platform, he would face immediate impeachment

proceedings. The message was unambiguous: no matter which party’s ticket you pick, as long as you govern Rivers State, you will do so under Wike’s terms.

Faced with that ultimatum, Governor Fubara backed down. Once again. He abandoned his second-term ambition on the APC ticket before it could gather any momentum. This was not a principled decision or a strategic retreat; it was a public confession of powerlessness. A sitting governor, constitutionally elected by millions of Rivers people, was forced to surrender his political future because one man,  a former governor now serving as a minister, threatened to deploy the legislative machinery of impeachment against him. The implication is staggering: Wike does not merely control the PDP in Rivers; he controls the APC as well. And if neither party offers an escape route, then Fubara has no route at all.

This threat of impeachment, contingent not on corruption or incompetence but on party affiliation, exposes the rotten core of Rivers politics. Impeachment is a constitutional process designed to remove a governor for gross misconduct or violation of the law. Wike has reduced it to a personal veto: step out of line, explore an alternative political platform, or seek re-election without my blessing, and the state House of Assembly warded with my loyalists, will end your tenure. That is not governance. That is hostage-taking.

The cost of this political domination has been staggering. The crisis in Rivers State led to pipeline vandalism, security threats to Nigeria’s oil infrastructure, the demolition of the House of Assembly complex, and the first suspension of an elected governor since the return to democracy in 1999. President Tinubu invoked a state of emergency, citing the breakdown of public order. Emergency rule is an extraordinary constitutional measure designed for extreme circumstances. That it became necessary in Rivers State should be a national embarrassment.

Yet, even as Governor Fubara returns to his duties, nothing has fundamentally changed. Wike continues to dictate the terms of political engagement, warning that the “mistake” of supporting Fubara’s emergence as governor will not be repeated. To graphically illustrate how dramatic the gang up against Fubara was, and still is, e Speaker of the House of Assembly, Martins Amaewhule, a Wike loyalist, was once allegedly positioned as an awaiting replacement. The fact that he even considered fleeing to the APC, only to be chased back by the threat of impeachment, proves that no party label can shield anyone from Wike’s long reach.

This is not democracy. Democracy demands that power flows from the people through free and fair elections. It demands that elected officials can choose their political affiliations without fear of extra-constitutional reprisal. It demands that governors can seek re-election on whatever platform they believe serves their constituents, without a former office holder holding a sword of impeachment over their heads.

In Rivers State, these principles have been inverted. Power does not belong to the people. It belongs to one man in Abuja, Wike, who never fully left Port Harcourt. As long as Wike’s grip remains absolute, as evidenced by his ability to kill Fubara’s APC ambition with a single threat,  the slogan “Power to the People” will remain a hollow phrase. Beautiful in theory. Meaningless in practice. Buried under the weight of one man’s will.