Voice of Emancipation: Tinubu’s State of Emergency is a Ticking Time Bomb

By Kayode Emola

Last Tuesday, President Tinubu announced a State of Emergency in Rivers State, citing, as his reason, breakdown of law and order. In his address to the nation, he announced the removal of the elected Governor and deputy Governor, as well as the dissolution of the state’s House of Assembly. In their stead, Tinubu appointed a sole administrator to govern the state for six months.

To the outside observer, the situation in Rivers State seems to be nothing but a power play and a show of strength. However, the consequences of this action may far outstrip that which even Tinubu himself can handle.

Whoever advised the president to take this line of action has not done him a favour. As a matter of fact, the president may have just signed his own deposition order by inviting the military back to take power from democratically elected officials. After all, who is to say that the military will be content limiting themselves to being merely a tool in the hands of Tinubu, rather than seeking to exercise their strength and start claiming the power from other elected individuals, potentially including the president himself?

It will behove the president to be cognisant of the fact that one good turn deserves another, and that he who lives by the sword will die by it too: the way he invited the military to seize power from the River State Governor is predictive of the way he would be removed from power himself. By heeding the advice of unscrupulous people, he has just set the timer on a bomb destined to detonate under his own feet.

There are so many alternative ways that the situation in Rivers State could have been handled that would have scored political points for the president. His rash actions have opened a can of worms, unstopping a djinn that cannot be bottled again.

President Tinubu would be wise to start making serious provisions for his safety, because there may not be a forewarning on the day his own turn comes. I hope and pray that he will have the sagacity to deal with it at that time.

However, the time has come, not only for Tinubu, but for every Yoruba person to seriously think about their safety. The president’s decision to declare of State of Emergency in Rivers State is not out of his love for the state. It is merely acquiescence to the will of his FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, who is the true marionettist behind the machinations in that state.

In trying to conciliate his friend Wike, the president has just put his political future in peril; his actions have now revealed the obvious presence of powerful men behind the scenes directing the affairs of the Nigerian people.
In so doing, the president has now placed himself into a lot of danger. His actions give the Ijaw nation heavy motivation to sabotage the government, the result of which would be that the already struggling economy will give way completely, if activities in the Niger Delta are disrupted in any way, shape, or form.

The Yoruba people must not be mere spectators this time around. President Tinubu is in the presidency only for himself, his family, and his cronies. Despite some people’s hopes that a Yoruba man holding the office of president might bring positive change for the country, and especially for our people, the events of this week show that nothing has changed and that the Nigerian government is still riddled with corrupt people who should be in prison and not in a place of authority.

We cannot allow the future of our children to be mortgaged by a government that shows disregard for the rule of law and international convention. We must take our destiny into our own hands and advocate for a system of leadership that serves its electorate and strives to lift up the downtrodden. The answer, sadly, as Tinubu’s actions have shown, is that this is not possible in the current system of Nigeria. The corruption has gone too deep and its hold on the political strata is too inexorable.

The only way we can safeguard a positive future for our children is to not only wipe the slate clean but to throw away the old slate and build ourselves a new one. We must press all the more earnestly for our own Yoruba nation, so that we have the environment in which to start afresh, with a clean, new slate and a pure moral foundation on which to construct our future and the future of those to come.