Fubara: The Return of the Native
This piece is not an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s masterpiece by the same name, nor even an exploration in part or whole of the evocative themes addressed in the 1878 novel. It has little to do with the collision of desires within the purview of social mores, except perhaps in a tangential, fully political way. The title of this piece, no doubt distinctly Hardian, merely mirrors the denouement of Rivers State governor Siminalayi Fubara’s politics, and perhaps, too, his style. Months after he assumed office in an election many observers judged generally coerced, Mr Fubara, unused to the sycophantic culture of State Houses, or of the intrigues and shifting alliances that punctuate state affairs at the highest level, described the abrasiveness of his mentor, ex-governor Nyesom Wike, as burdensome and intolerable. He concluded rather too hastily that the yoke should be thrown off.
Thereafter began more than two cataclysmic years of fighting his predecessor. State affairs were not only paralysed, emotions also ran riot, arson consumed iconic buildings, alliances were dissolved and reassembled, and no one, not even the rebel commanders nor the suzerains themselves, could sleep with both eyes closed. Amid what seemed like budding public revolt, emergency rule temporarily replaced the governor, and a measure of uneasy calm took over. Soon thereafter, there were defections, then more defections, until Rivers politics became a whirligig. No one could tell where the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) started and ended, or in which direction the All Progressives Congress (APC) compass pointed. Finally, however, on July 22, Mr Fubara cryptically announced his support for the Rainbow Coalition, endorsed President Bola Tinubu for the presidency in 2027, and backed Mr Wike’s choice for governorship, Kingsley Chinda. He was unsure whether the rainbow coalition should be called Rainbow Party or Rainbow Coalition, but he backed it wholeheartedly anyway.
Except the combustible Mr Wike himself, it is unclear how many Riverians or even outsiders can tell what the rainbow coalition looks like. Mr Wike has tried to juggle many balls in the air at the same time, probably like Mr Chinda himself, and to a little extent the cantankerous speaker of the legislature, Martin Amaewhule. But the rest of the country, including this writer, labours to draw a line between Rivers State’s intertwined political affiliations. It is hoped that Mr Wike can keep track. But as far as nomenclature goes, Mr Fubara no longer gives a damn. To have his peace and look forward to the future, especially after many turbulent years in office, he has convinced himself to embrace anything Mr Wike favours. He had thought defecting to the APC would put him in the president’s good graces, particularly seeing he had just been conferred the number one spot in the party’s membership register. Blocked on all sides, and finding no elbow room left, he has wisely conceded the fight and sought peace no matter how undignified.
The terseness of Mr Fubara’s declaration hints at his extreme discomfort in surrendering the high ground he had defended for months. He had in short surrendered to fatalism. According to him, “We have made peace in the state. And I am supporting our rainbow party, or rainbow coalition…President Ahmed Bola Tinubu is our president, and he’s the one we are supporting…Kingsley Chinda is the governorship candidate that I am supporting. And anybody who believes in me will support every candidate that is under the rainbow.” With barely nine months left in his governorship, he will not be adventurous anymore, and is, therefore, unlikely to walk back his public confessions, regardless of how humiliating it seems. He had for months struggled to be rational about his politics; it is humbling that months into the expiration of his term, he has finally found the formula to coexist with Mr Wike. It may be a little late, but it will probably secure peaceful after-office life for him. He had realised too late that those who constantly egged him on to fight battles he was ill-equipped to prosecute were all men of straw.
In his latest monthly media chat, though Mr Wike was characteristically unrestrained in his victory over Mr Fubara, he was nevertheless correct to suggest that the governor merely surrendered to inevitability. Reductively speaking, however, Mr Wike was in fact the architect of the chaos that enveloped the state as the governor tried to assert himself months after assuming office. The former governor not only misjudged Mr Fubara, he may also have mismanaged the battle when it flared. In fact, at a point, the president had to step in to save his bacon through the declaration of a state of emergency. Emergency rule not only curbed the violence enveloping the state and perhaps too prevented the impeachment of the governor, it also helped Mr Wike avoid the potential disaster of having to find out in a test of wills whether the public would not turn against him.
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What matters now is not what might have been had Mr Fubara continued his war of attrition with his predecessor or if he had avoided pitched battles with the former governor and opted for asymmetric warfare. At least he has capitulated. Having waved the white flag, he can no longer wave the red rag. For what might, historically speaking, be described as a phoney war in Rivers, is all but over. The governor will of course pull his punches in the coming plebiscite, despite his protestations to the contrary, but the restraint will not be enough to give victory to the opposition with whom Mr Wike shares mutual loathing. The native has returned; but even if his former enemies viewed him with great hesitation and doubt his bona fides, they could not load their muskets again or fire at him.
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