By Dr. Tonye Clinton Jaja

Whether you admire his personality or not, His Excellency, Chief Nyesom Ezenwo Wike (NEW) has two outstanding qualities:

1. He is an unrepentant believer in the Rule of Law as administered by the courts of law. Most of the times, he approaches the courts to procure judgments to settle any disputes that he has. This is a better option instead of taking the laws into his hands (except in the case of the PDP presidential primaries election when he lost to Atiku Abubakar and he didn’t go to any court of law); and
2. NEW is also a great communicator, he has a way with words and even when words fail him, he has different dance steps to communicate and pass his message across!!!

In line with his mastery of the gift of the garb, in the year 2022, NEW was quoted as saying:

“I can’t leave PDP that has malaria fever and join APC which has cancer”.

The metaphor of medical ailments that NEW used in that speech is the analogy that I shall seek to explore in this article.

The Supreme Court of Nigeria has assumed the role of a “medical doctor” that has been called upon to cure the ailment (s) that has plagued governance in Rivers State since November 2023.

The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (PBAT) intervened twice, once in December 2023 and again in October 2024. An eight point Resolution was signed by both warring factions represented by Governor Fubara and NEW.

However, PBAT’s intervention did not cure the ailment(s).

In his characteristic manner of resorting to the courts of law, as “medical doctors”, NEW through his proxies have procured several judgments in their favour.

Governor Fubara and his camp, on their part have also procured some judgments in their own favour.

However, the sum total of all these judgments, have not decisively decided or determined or “cured” the ailment(s)!!

So the question arises: “what is the nature of the ailment(s)?

It is a popular cliche that: “a problem identified, is halfway solved”!!

Since I am not an active litigation lawyer for the past ten years, I had to ask lawyers who are in active litigation practice.

Out of all the answers that I received, the most accurate, the most apt and most revealing is the answer provided by a lawyer named Otokine Wokoma, he has granted me permission to reproduce his answer below as follows:

A wife (Governor Fubara) found out her husband (Wike and the Amawhule and the 26 with APC that NEW said has got cancer) is cheating and is now infected with STD, STI and HIV, (HIV/AIDS is an incurable disease which occurred in December 2023 when Amawhule and the 26 publicly announced their defection to the APC in violation of Section section 68(1)g of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999).

The wife (Governor Fubara) now refuses to sleep (ordinary malaria) with her husband (Amawhule and the 26) He (Amawhule and the 26 said Governor Fubara refused to submit the 2024 Rivers State budget to them) went to court for the court to determine whether a wife has a right to deprived her husband sex.

The wife didn’t defend the suit but instead went to file for divorce. The husband now has a valid judgement that she doesn’t have the right to deprive him of sex, that it is her marital obligation.

So the husband is showing the whole world how his wife is disobeying a lawful order of the court (malaria).

The wife on the other hand is showing the world the petition she filed to dissolve her marriage (because of the HIV/AIDS that Amawhule and the 26 contracted in December 2023 when they defected in December 2023 and thereby lost their seats as specified in Section 68(1)g.

Both parties and their supporters are on social media arguing.

But the right position should be for the final court (Supreme Court of Nigeria) to decide all matters together because obeying some Orders of court will be destructive to the other party. As the main case of dissolution of marriage will decide the right of a spouse automatically.

So we can apply this logic to Rivers State drama as only the final determination of the defection case can resolve the 1st phase of this political crisis for now legally.”