Following Tuesday’s emergency rule proclamation and the imposition of sole administration on Rivers, Peoples Gazette reports Bola Tinubu had previously considered declaring a state of emergency a diabolic and illegal action.

Mr Tinubu, leader of the opposition party in 2013, had come down hard on then-President Goodluck Jonathan for declaring an emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe at the height of the Boko Haram insurgency. During that period, Mr Jonathan did not remove the governor and other elected officials from office.

Yet, Mr Tinubu subjected the then-president to opprobrium, accusing Mr Jonathan of attempts to emasculate Adamawa, Borno and Yobe governors.

“It is a display of unpardonable mediocrity and diabolic partisanship geared towards 2015. Borno and Yobe states have been literally under armies of occupation with the attendant excruciating hardship experienced daily by the indigenes and residents of these areas,” Mr Tinubu had said in 2013. 

Mr Tinubu added, “This government now wants to use the excuse of the security challenges faced by the governors to remove them from the states considered hostile to the 2015 PDP/Jonathan project.”

Nearly a dozen years later, as president, Mr Tinubu has used the same playbook deployed by Mr Jonathan to address a lingering crisis affecting safety and security. 

Going a step further with his proclamation of emergency rule and imposition of sole administration in Rivers, citing “disturbing incidents of vandalisation of pipelines by some militants without the governor taking any action to curtail them.”

The president invoked Section 180 of the Nigerian Constitution to declare a state of emergency in Rivers after a protracted political feud between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and lawmakers loyal to Nyesom Wike.

Mr Tinubu suspended Fubara, his deputy and all elected officials for six months and immediately nominated a former naval chief, Ibokette Ibas, as sole administrator.

Major opposition party PDP and the Nigerian Bar Association have slammed the president’s action as unconstitutional and illegal. The president was also accused of bias in the lingering crisis in Rivers, siding with the FCT minister.

In the diatribe hurled at the then-president in 2013, Mr Tinubu accused him of deliberately launching an onslaught against the northern governors.

“It is now abundantly clear that President Jonathan has finally bared his fangs. By declaring a state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, he (Jonathan) has intimidated and emasculated the governors of these states,” he said.

Mr Tinubu added, “The present scenario playing out in the country reminds one of the classical case of a mediocre craftsman who continually blames the tools of his trade for his serial failure but refuses to look at his pitiable state with a view to adjusting.”

“No governor of a state in Nigeria is the chief security officer. Putting the blame on the governors who have been effectively emasculated for the abysmal performance of the government at the centre, which controls all these security agencies, smacks of ignorance and mischief.”