Former vice president Atiku Abubakar has said President Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State reeks of political manipulation and outright bad faith.
In a statement, Atiku said anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers.
He stated that Tinubu’s blatant refusal or calculated negligence in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful.
He also stated that beyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the President’s desk.
“Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent,” he said.
According to Atiku, it is an unforgivable failure that under Tiinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.
The former vice president lamented that years of progress made by Yar’adua have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.
“If federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility. Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tunubu’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms,” he said.