By Kenneth Okonkwo

Rivers State is well known in Nigeria as one of the richest States in oil deposits and exploration. Out of the four oil refineries that Nigeria can boast of, two are located in Rivers State. Rivers is also notorious as one of the richest States in political crises and turmoil. These political crises are unnecessary and most often self inflicted because Rivers is one of the very few States from 1999 that has been governed by only one party – Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The situation in Rivers State is emblematic of the indiscipline and confusion that has characterised the PDP from Obasanjo’s years with its headquarters in Rivers State. President Obasanjo of the PDP, for the nebulous excuse that the PDP gubernatorial primary election that brought Chibuike Amechi had k-leg, removed Amechi and replaced him with Omehia as the gubernatorial candidate of PDP. After the general election, Amechi went to court and was declared the winner of the Rivers State gubernatorial election even when he didn’t participate in the general election and this was how the judiciary began to have power to declare someone, not elected by the people, to become an executive in Nigeria. Thanks to the political notoriety of Rivers State.

Amechi chose Wike to become his Chief of Staff, whom he recommended to become a Minister at the Federal level, after which, sensing that Amechi will not make him Governor after his second term, being of the same Ikwerre ethnic group, for which he is mortally interested, and capitalising on the feud between Amechi and President Jonathan family, Wike fell out with Amechi, and when Amechi defected to the All Progressives Congress, used all his political manoeuvrings to become the Governor after Amechi. At the end of the second term of Wike, he fell out with his party, PDP, for having the audacity to deny him the presidential or the vice presidential ticket of his party, even when, and rightly too, presidential power was meant to move south. He supported the APC presidential candidate at the national level and succeeded also in planting his surrogate as the Governor of Rivers State, Gov Sim Fubara. It didn’t take long after the election for noticeable cracks to start emerging between Wike and his political godson, even before the swearing in of Fubara. The gravamen of the dispute was that Fubara, having inherited Wike’s position, must also inherit his enemies, and there are very many of them, and to this Fubara may have said, God forbid!

Fubara managed the situation and was sworn in. Wike became a Minister under an APC led Federal Government but didn’t want to give up the godfather role to Fubara. Fubara wanted to be allowed to breathe without Wike’s consent which infuriated Wike and which prompted him to reach the decision that Fubara should be suffocated and breath taken out of him through impeachment. Fubara dared the bullets and teargas to confront the House of Assembly (HOA) members, demanding to be told why he should be impeached. This led to an international condemnation of the act and nailed to the coffin any chance of amicable solution to the crisis, despite the intervention of the national leadership of APC. Having failed to remove Fubara from office through the PDP led HOA, Nigerians woke up on Tuesday, 12th December, 2023, to the news that 25 members of the Rivers State HOA, loyal to Wike, have defected to the APC. The reason they gave was that the position of the National Secretary of PDP was contested in court. Armed with this defection, the faction loyal to Fubara went to court and secured an injunction recognising the Edison Ehie led members of the Rivers HOA as the authentic members of the HOA and Ehie as the authentic Speaker. The court backed Speaker, immediately swung into action and on the 13th December, declared the seats of the defected lawmakers led by Martins Amaewhule vacant. The Governor of Rivers State swung into action and demolished the earlier bombed HOA complex, declaring it unfit for human habitation or usage, having failed integrity test by Engineers and experts in building.

Fubara is really a good student of Wike in this act of a godson breaking free from a godfather. As this was happening, he was felicitating with “his Oga” on his 56th birthday, and at the same time presenting his budget of N800b to the HOA loyal to him. Wike taught him well. Wike used the instrumentality of an injunction to stop PDP from suspending or expelling him for obvious anti-party activity of supporting a presidential candidate of APC at the national level. He dared PDP to do their worst. Wike has already dubbed the Rivers HOA complex inferior and unbefitting because it was the legislature that constructed it through their contractor. Fubara simply helped to pull it down after the bombing.

The legality of the defection has long been settled by the Constitution and our courts. Sections 68(1)(g) or 109(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution as amended is very clear that “A member of a House of Assembly (National Assembly) shall vacate his seat in the House if being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected: Provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored”. Whenever a member defects, the Speaker of the HOA gives effect to the law against defection by declaring the seat vacant and the Independent National Electoral Commission ((INEC) shall conduct elections into those seats within 90 days.

The exception to this rule is where there is a division in the party that renders the party incapable of performing its functions. This position has been clarified by the Supreme Court in Abegunde v. O.S.H.A. (2015) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1461) 314, where the court said that “The principles enunciated by the Supreme Court in the two cases of FEDECO v. Goni (1983) 2 SCNLR 227 and A.-G., Fed. v. Abubakar (2007) is to the effect that only such factionalisation, fragmentation, splintering or “division” that makes it impossible or impracticable for a political party to function as such will, by virtue of the proviso to section 68(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution, justify a person’s defection to another party and the retention of his seat for the unexpired term in the house in spite of the defection. The division must affect the entire structure of the political party at the centre, that is to say, national leadership. Otherwise, as rightly held by the trial court and the Court of Appeal in this case, the defector automatically loses his seat.” In Ogbuoji v. Umahi (2022) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1832) 323, the Court of Appeal held that “The consequence of loss of seat for defection from the political party which sponsored a legislative member is for bye election to be conducted and not for the vacated seat to be allocated to either the political party or the runners up at the election”.

It is important to note that PDP has displayed great indiscipline and confusion in the management of its affairs to the extent that the leadership of APC in Rivers State publicly declared that “we are benefiting from their own stupidity”. However, the defecting PDP members in Rivers State, must prove, by tangible evidence, that PDP is so divided, fragmented, factionalised and splintered to such an extent that it cannot function before the exception to the rule of defection can avail them. For now, the mere fact that there are cases in court contesting the position of the secretary of PDP is very far from what is required to legally defect from one party to the other. It is therefore submitted, especially with respect to the use of the clause “automatically loses his seat” by the Supreme Court whenever any legislator defects, that all the 27 seats of the defected Rivers State members of the HOA have become vacant having been vacated by the members without a division in the national leadership of PDP and INEC is under a duty to organise elections into those seats within 90 days.

Special lessons should be learnt by this debacle. Without sounding unnecessarily theological, God is still the ruler in the affairs of men. Whoever is playing God to his fellow human beings, so do it at his own peril. That you assisted someone to power doesn’t give you the absolute power over such a person perpetually, after all, someone else assisted you to power also. Wike is a deft politician who is smart, strong and astute, but he is not God. There’s a limit that your natural abilities can take you and by the natural law of diminishing returns, at a certain point, you start decreasing. A leader should know when the game is up and subject himself to the majesty of the supreme authority of the Almighty God over mankind.

We must also be careful because whatever one sows, he reaps. Wike has made a lot of vows, both publicly and privately which he failed to keep. He vowed openly and unconditionally to support any candidate who emerged from the presidential primary election of PDP in eagle’s square, but ended up supporting the presidential candidate of APC which he earlier described as cancerous. He canvassed openly that whoever defects from his seat from the party that elected him should vacate his seat. God said, it’s better you don’t vow at all, than not keep it. He fought his godfather in politics and even set up commission of enquiry to send him to jail. Now, his own surrogate, is paying him back in his own coin. Karma nawa for you!