The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, says suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State is making reconciliatory moves and had, alongside two other governors, visited him.
Wike, the immediate past governor of Rivers State, said this on Monday following reports that Fubara, who was suspended earlier in the year, visited the FCT minister.
“The President has called for peace severally and I cannot sit down when the President has called for peace and I say, ‘I don’t want peace’,” Wike said during a media parley with select journalists in Abuja.
“Yes, he came with two governors and one elder person. Unfortunately, the two governors are APC governors. So, I will not pursue him. He said he wants peace. That’s fine. I also want peace.”
The rift between Wike and Fubara threw Rivers into a political crisis, which lingered for months and reached a crescendo when President Bola Tinubu suspended Fubara, the Rivers Assembly, and the state’s deputy governor, Ngozi Odu.
Tinubu thereafter appointed a state administrator whom he saddled with running Rivers affairs for six months in a major political event that split opinions among Nigerians.
Months after the suspension, Wike said that though Fubara is suing for peace, the suspended governor needs to take more conciliatory steps instead of allegedly organising protests against the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State.
“I told him, ‘Look, I don’t think you have the capacity to really make this peace.’ That’s why when I read what I read yesterday, I felt so bad. Why? If you are making peace, your people are demonstrating every day; if you are making peace, your people are busy on television insulting people. How do you feel in that case?”
“You must take steps. Have you met the assembly people? There are leaders you should meet. It is not to say, ‘I want peace.’ You must show it by conduct and action,” the former governor said.
Wike claimed that Fubara was deceived by some governors before the crisis snowballed.
“Governors came pushing him, where are they now? I think the governors are enjoying their own,” the former governor said.
“Fubara is a young man, I warned him saying, look, go this way, go this way and you will not have problems.”
