Odimegwu Onwumere
A piercing, investigative exposé of a six-month political experiment that suspended democracy in Rivers State under a federal emergency rule. ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE writes that presented as a stabilizing intervention, Ibas’s rule became an opaque, authoritarian regime where nearly ₦300 billion flowed through state coffers without any legislative oversight, transparency, or visible development
On the morning of September 17, 2025, the city of Port Harcourt awoke to a fragile dawn. For six long months—180 days etched into the collective memory like a scar—the vibrant, often tumultuous heart of Rivers State had been silenced. The democratic pulse, that chaotic and essential rhythm of governance, had been deliberately stilled by a decree from Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of power. In its place, an artificial calm had descended, the kind of quiet that blankets a graveyard. This was not the peace of resolution, but the silence of suppression. And on this day, as the instruments of power were to be formally returned, the air was thick with a question that hung heavier than the delta humidity: What is the price of such a peace, and who, ultimately, would be made to pay it?
The handover ceremony itself was a masterpiece of political theatre, a sterile and soulless affair designed to project an image of orderly transition. Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd.), the sole administrator, stood ramrod straight, his crisp traditional attire a thin veneer over an unyielding military bearing. He presented the symbols of office to Governor Siminalayi Fubara, a man who for half a year had been a ghost in his own government. Although, Fubara was not present. The cameras flashed, capturing a handshake that was a study in brevity, a fleeting contact devoid of warmth or reconciliation with those who were present. It was the perfunctory exchange of a key, not the restoration of a sacred mandate. Then, as swiftly and silently as he had arrived, the administrator was gone. He left behind a government house scrubbed clean of its former occupants’ presence, a state budget shrouded in impenetrable secrecy, and a populace holding its breath, waiting for the pressure cooker to hiss.
This was not merely the end of a temporary administrative arrangement. It was the beginning of a profound reckoning. The six-month state of emergency in Rivers State was presented to the nation as a necessary, if regrettable, act of political surgery. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, invoking the constitution as his scalpel, had declared the state’s democratic organs cancerous, paralyzed by the bitter feud between a governor and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike. The solution was to excise them entirely: the Governor, his deputy, and the entire legislature were suspended, their authority replaced by the singular, unchecked power of one man.
But as the democratic machinery was being dusted off and switched back on, the true nature of this “cure” was becoming terrifyingly apparent. It was a cure that threatened to kill the patient. For six months, a river of unprecedented wealth—a torrent of nearly 300 billion naira from federal allocations and internal revenue—had flowed into the state’s coffers. Yet, this river seemed to vanish into a sinkhole of opacity. There were no public budgets, no oversight, no legislative scrutiny, no accountability. Projects stalled, cranes stood like skeletal sentinels over abandoned construction sites, and the people, in whose name this intervention was supposedly enacted, were left to wonder what had become of their commonwealth.
The story of the administrator’s six-month reign is therefore more than a tale of political turmoil in one of Nigeria’s richest states. It is a cautionary saga about the fragility of democracy itself. It is a stark illustration of how easily constitutional checks and balances can be dismantled in the name of order, and how the vacuum of power is inevitably filled by the arrogance of impunity. The ensuing battle is not just about balancing books or scrutinizing contracts; it is a fight for the very soul of Rivers State. It is a desperate, unyielding demand from its people to drag the actions of the powerful from the shadows and into the unforgiving light of day, to force an answer to the fundamental question: In a democracy, to whom does power truly belong?
Anatomy of the issue:
To understand the crisis that necessitated—or rather, provided the pretext for—the federal intervention, one must first understand the corrosive nature of godfatherism in Nigerian politics. It is a uniquely Nigerian affliction, a political patronage system that reduces elected officials to puppets and their powerful sponsors to puppeteers, pulling the strings of governance from the shadows. The relationship between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, was a textbook case. Fubara, Wike’s handpicked successor, was expected to be the loyal subordinate, the custodian of a political structure he did not build. But power, once tasted, is a potent intoxicant. The inevitable divergence of interests, a whisper that began in the gilded corridors of Government House, soon erupted into a seismic political war.
This was no mere policy disagreement. It was a primal struggle for control, a battle for the soul and, more critically, the substantial treasury of Rivers State. The state’s House of Assembly, meant to be a chamber of reasoned debate and legislative oversight, became the primary battlefield. It fractured along lines of personal loyalty, splitting into two warring factions, each swearing allegiance to one of the two political titans. One faction, loyal to Wike, moved to impeach the governor. The other, loyal to Fubara, resisted. The result was a constitutional train wreck. Governance ground to a halt. The complex machinery of state, responsible for everything from paying teachers’ salaries to paving roads and running hospitals, seized up, its gears jammed with the grit of raw political ambition. The symphony of commerce and daily life in Port Harcourt was drowned out by the cacophony of political brawling.
From his seat of power in Abuja, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu watched the escalating chaos. The situation was untenable, an embarrassment to his administration and a threat to the stability of the oil-rich Niger Delta. On March 18, 2025, he acted. Invoking his constitutional powers to declare a state of emergency, he brought the full weight of the federal government to bear. But this was no delicate intervention. It was a political blitzkrieg. The suspension of the governor, his deputy, and the entire legislature was a move of shocking audacity, a measure so drastic that it sent tremors through the nation’s legal and political communities. It was a constitutional “nuclear option,” and its detonation left a crater in the landscape of Nigerian federalism.
In their place, a single figure was installed: Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (retd.). A former Chief of Naval Staff, Ibas was the personification of military discipline and stoic authority. His appointment was framed as a depoliticized, technocratic solution, a necessary surgical intervention to excise a political cancer before it metastasized. The move was swiftly ratified by both chambers of the National Assembly, rubber-stamping the emergency rule as a temporary, corrective measure. The narrative was clear: a firm hand was needed to restore order where democratic chaos had failed.
But for the people of Rivers State, this narrative rang hollow. It felt less like a healing intervention and more like a hostile takeover. They had traded a fractured democracy for a functional dictatorship. Their elected representatives, for all their flaws, were their representatives. They had been silenced, their mandate cast aside. In their place stood a proconsul, an administrator who answered not to the people of Rivers, but to the distant authority in Abuja. It felt like replacing a broken bone with a steel rod—functional, perhaps, but cold, unyielding, and alien to the body politic. The democratic soul of the state had been put into a medically induced coma. Six months later, as the patient was being roused, the terrifying question remained: would it ever fully recover?
The Reign of the Proconsul and the River of Gold:
The six-month tenure of Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas was an exercise in absolute power, executed with the quiet efficiency of a military operation. He was the sole executive, the sole legislature, and the sole authority over the state’s vast resources. The usual noise of democracy—the debates, the committee hearings, the press conferences, the protests—was replaced by an unnerving silence. For some, this silence was a welcome respite from the political brawling. For others, it was the sound of accountability dying.
While the state’s political life was in suspended animation, its financial life was more vibrant than ever. An astonishing river of funds poured into the state’s coffers from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC). According to checks, painstakingly, compiling data from the National Bureau of Statistics, later revealed the breathtaking scale of this influx. Between March and August 2025, Rivers State received a colossal N254.37 billion.
March: N44.66 billion
April: N44.42 billion
May: N42.80 billion
June: N42.30 billion
July: N38.42 billion
August: N41.76 billion
The monthly average stood at a staggering N42.4 billion. When projections for September’s allocation and the state’s own Internally Generated Revenue (IGR)—conservatively estimated at N10 billion a month—were factored in, the total sum under the administrator’s solitary control approached the N300 billion mark. A third of a trillion naira.
The largest single contributor was the 13% oil derivation fund, a direct consequence of the oil extracted from the state’s soil and waters, which pumped N133.24 billion into the account. Another N107.78 billion flowed in from Value Added Tax (VAT) receipts. This was the people’s wealth, the birthright of every man, woman, and child in Rivers State, meant to build their schools, pave their roads, equip their hospitals, and secure their future.
Yet, as this river of gold flowed into the state, an impenetrable wall of silence emanated from the administrator’s office. The 2025 Budget Implementation Report for the second quarter, a statutory document that is the bedrock of fiscal transparency, was never published. It was as if the state’s finances had been classified as a national security secret. The administration operated within a financial black box, its inner workings hidden from public view. Contracts were awarded, funds were disbursed, and priorities were set by one man, with no oversight, no public input, and no accountability to anyone within the state he governed. It was a system that was not just ripe for abuse; it was a system that seemed designed to facilitate it.
This deliberate opacity sparked a firestorm of outrage among the state’s vibrant civil society. Enefaa Georgewill, the fiercely outspoken Chairman of the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations in Rivers State, refused to let the silence stand. He chose his battlefield carefully, organizing a press conference not in a sterile conference room, but in front of the most potent symbol of the administration’s inertia: the stalled construction site of the new Rivers State House of Assembly Complex.
“We stand here before a monument to mismanagement!” Georgewill declared, his voice ringing with righteous fury as he gestured towards the skeletal structure of concrete and rusting rebar. Cranes stood frozen against the grey sky, silent monuments to abandoned progress. Weeds, nature’s patient opportunists, were already reclaiming the grounds. “For six months, this state was awash in money. Over a quarter of a trillion naira! And what do we have to show for it? This! Stalled projects. Cosmetic renovations. A complete and utter lack of transparency. We don’t just suspect corruption; the evidence of gross incompetence and monumental waste is before our very eyes!”
His call was not for a legislative probe, which he feared would become mired in the very politics that caused the crisis. He demanded that Governor Fubara bypass the Assembly and immediately establish an independent, time-bound panel of inquiry, staffed by forensic auditors and respected figures, to conduct a deep-dive audit of every single kobo received from both FAAC and IGR during the administrator’s tenure.
Emma Obe, the Rivers spokesperson for the Civil Liberties Organisation, amplified the call. “The emergency government was an illegality that trampled upon every constitutional check and balance,” he argued. “There were no public hearings for the budget, no legislative oversight. It was a one-man show. It was an imperial reign. And now, the emperor must be held to account. Let this be a lesson to all: whoever spends public money without accounting for it will pay for it. If not today, then tomorrow. The people will not forget.”
The public outcry was growing from a murmur to a roar. But the man at the center of the storm, the stoic proconsul who had held the fate of millions in his hands, remained unmoved and defiant.
The Arrogance of Power and the Presidential Summons:
From his temporary residence in the serene opulence of Abuja, far from the simmering anger in Port Harcourt, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas received the news of the Assembly’s probe with what was described as a dismissive laugh. He saw it not as a legitimate exercise of legislative power, but as the impotent gesture of sidelined politicians. He summoned his Senior Special Adviser on Media, Hector Igbikiowubu, a man well-versed in the art of the political counter-attack.
“A probe?” Ibas reportedly asked, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “An absolute fool’s errand. Draft a response. Make it sharp. Make it clear. Ask them a simple question: Was it the Rivers State House of Assembly that appointed the sole administrator? The answer is no. The administrator was appointed by the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. His actions were supervised and ratified by the National Assembly. To probe me is to attempt to probe the Presidency. They are flies trying to swat a lion. Let them know they are punching far, far above their weight.”
The resulting press statement was a masterclass in political condescension. It dripped with contempt for the reinstated lawmakers, dismissing their resolution as “futile,” “misguided,” and an “exercise in legislative overreach.” It questioned their very jurisdiction, framing the probe as an unconstitutional affront to federal authority. The message was as clear as it was chilling: Ibas considered himself accountable only to the federal power that had appointed him, not to the five million people of the state he was sent to govern. He was not their servant; he was their overseer. Their demands for transparency were irrelevant.
This defiant stance was a gallon of gasoline poured onto a raging fire. It was an insult not just to the lawmakers, but to every citizen of Rivers State. It confirmed their worst fears: that the state of emergency had been used to create a constitutional black hole where accountability could not exist. The administrator’s argument, that he was above the scrutiny of the state’s democratic institutions, was a dagger to the heart of the principle of popular sovereignty.
The battle escalated. In Lagos, the public interest law firm led by the relentless activist lawyer Deji Adeyanju decided that political pressure was not enough. On September 24, they took the fight to a new front, formally submitting a detailed and damning petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC). The petition was not based on rhetoric, but on cold, hard facts: the N283.3 billion in total receipts (including a conservative estimate of IGR), the deliberate failure to publish statutory budget reports, and the glaring, state-wide lack of tangible projects commensurate with such colossal expenditure. It was a formal demand for an urgent and thorough criminal investigation into Ibas’s tenure for potential gross misappropriation of public funds and abuse of office.
The legal pressure mounted just as the political pressure reached its zenith. The war of words between Port Harcourt and Abuja had become a national spectacle, and it was now impossible for the Presidency to ignore. News, carefully leaked from the inner sanctums of Aso Rock, confirmed that President Tinubu, the architect of the entire affair, had finally stepped in. A formal summons was issued. Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas was to report, with immediate effect, to the Presidential Villa.
The news landed like a bombshell. In Port Harcourt, Governor Fubara’s camp saw it as a monumental victory, a validation of their relentless push for accountability. In Abuja, Ibas and his team projected an air of calm confidence, but privately, the gravity of a presidential summons could not be understated. This was no longer a squabble with provincial lawmakers. This was a direct call to account from the highest office in the land.
On the evening of Wednesday, September 24, 2025, a black convoy with tinted windows swept through the imposing gates of the Presidential Villa. Ibas, his face an impassive mask, was escorted into the hallowed halls of power. But this was not to be a simple, one-on-one debriefing. The President was not alone. Waiting with him were two of the most powerful men in the country’s financial and legal enforcement apparatus: the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, and, most ominously, the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukayede.
The presence of the EFCC chair transformed the meeting entirely. It was no longer about resolving a jurisdictional dispute between state and federal power. It was now about fiscal transparency, financial probity, and the very real potential for a high-level corruption investigation. The “fool’s errand” of the Rivers State lawmakers had led the administrator directly into a room with the nation’s top prosecutor. The doors closed at 5:50 pm. For hours, the nation waited. When Ibas finally emerged, his stony expression offered no clues. He was whisked away without a word to the waiting press corps. The Villa remained officially silent on the meeting’s agenda and outcome, but the symbolism of the attendees was a message in itself, a thunderclap that echoed from Abuja to Port Harcourt. The Presidency was now directly entangled in the web of its own making. The demand for accountability had reached the very top.
An Uncertain Future and an Unyielding Demand:
With the lifting of the emergency rule, the democratic structures in Rivers State are, on paper, back in place. Governor Fubara is back in his office. The House of Assembly is back in session. But the ground beneath these institutions is profoundly unstable. The state is at a critical crossroads, facing the monumental task of not just governing, but of healing a deep wound inflicted upon its body politic. The challenge is threefold: to rebuild the shattered trust between the government and the governed, to enforce accountability without descending into a new cycle of political warfare, and to restart the stalled engine of governance to address the pressing needs of its people.
Looming over this entire affair is the Supreme Court case, docketed as SC/CV/329/2025, filed by eleven courageous PDP governors challenging the fundamental legality of the emergency declaration. That case remains in judicial limbo, a lingering, unanswered question mark over the constitutionality of the President’s actions. Its eventual verdict will have profound implications for the balance of power in Nigeria’s fragile federation.
Governor Fubara, now firmly back in the saddle, must navigate a treacherous political landscape. He is caught between the public’s ravenous demand for justice and the political imperative to restore stability. He must deliver on his promise of accountability, but he must do so with the precision of a surgeon, not the recklessness of a demolition crew. A vindictive witch-hunt could easily plunge the state back into the very chaos the emergency rule was supposed to quell. His administration’s ultimate test will be its ability to look forward, to focus on the tangible needs of the people: restoring public services, fixing roads that have become impassable, upgrading hospitals and schools that have been neglected, and creating an environment where commerce and opportunity can finally thrive.
The probe initiated by the Rivers State House of Assembly moves forward, a symbol of reawakened legislative will. Yet it faces the formidable constitutional hurdle erected by Ibas’s defiant argument. Whether it will yield concrete results or become hopelessly entangled in a web of legal and political maneuvering remains to be seen.
One thing, however, is unequivocally, unshakably clear. The people of Rivers State have been changed by this ordeal. After years of being treated as passive spectators to the grand games played with their future and their resources, they are demanding a new settlement. They have watched their immense wealth—billions upon billions of naira—flow into a black box, while their infrastructure crumbled and their democratic institutions were paralyzed. The era of being kept in the dark is over. They are watching. They are waiting. And they will not be silenced.
The administrator’s dilemma has become the state’s sacred demand. It is a powerful, resonant, and unyielding call for light to be shone into the darkest corners of power. It is a declaration that the peace of suppression is no peace at all, and that true stability can only be built on the bedrock of transparency, justice, and accountability. The quiet in Rivers State is deceptive. Beneath the surface, a current of righteous anger is gathering force, and it will not be denied.
• Onwumere is Chairman, Advocacy Network On Religious And Cultural Coexistence (ANORACC)
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