‘How Tinubu Lambasted Fubara At Peace Meeting With Wike’

President Bola Tinubu, on Monday, allegedly lambasted the Governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, during a peace meeting at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Naija News had earlier reported that Tinubu met with Fubara, a former governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike and other Rivers stakeholders.

Two sources who were present at the meeting confirmed to Premium Times that President Tinubu lambasted Fubara at the meeting.

The meeting had in attendance Vice President Kashim Shettima, the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, a former governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili, and the chairpersons of the PDP and the APC in Rivers.

The sources said the president was “very angry” with Fubara over the demolition of the Rivers House of Assembly Complex in the course of the power tussle between the governor and Wike, describing it as a “desecration of democracy”.

Tinubu said at the meeting that he has fought for democracy all his life and that he could not imagine a governor demolishing a “symbol of democracy” like the House of Assembly, “wiping out history, not allowing anything to be taken away from there, just destroying it and everything.”

He mentioned that when he was the governor of Lagos State, the state assembly once stood up to him, but that he respected them and met them halfway in their demands.

The governor had earlier claimed that the complex was demolished because the integrity of the building had been compromised after an explosion and fire incident which occurred in October.

Some people, however, feel the complex was demolished to stop the impeachment move against the Rivers State Governor.

On the approach of Wike to the crisis in Rivers, the sources said President Tinubu, at the Abuja meeting, referred to how he had a “problem with someone in Lagos”, apparently referring to his political disagreement with the then Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos and how he stopped the governor from getting re-elected.

The president said he did not take the laws into his hands but waited till election season for the “renewal of mandate”.

According to the sources, Tinubu told all the parties in the crisis to maintain peace and not to take any action that is outside the realms of the country’s law.

One of the sources told Premium Times that it was clear to everyone in the meeting that Wike could remove Governor Fubara from power within days, given that he controls the majority of the Rivers lawmakers.

The source, however, said that “people in the meeting felt that the president believes that Fubara must be given another chance.”

As part of the peace deal between Governor Fubara and Wike, all the officials (Wike’s loyalists) who resigned from the Rivers State Government would be reappointed into Fubara’s cabinet, the 25 lawmakers whose seats were declared vacant because they defected from the PDP to the APC would be allowed back in the assembly, and that the governor should present again the state’s 2024 budget, which he had already signed into law, to all the lawmakers, including the ones whose seats had been declared vacant.