When the Rivers State House of Assembly abruptly shut down the plenary on 5 December 2025 and pushed sittings into the New Year, it did not feel like a routine adjournment. It felt like a warning. Weeks later, that warning matured into an impeachment notice—another one—forcing a single, uncomfortable question into public debate: is Governor Siminalayi Fubara calm because he is in control, calculated because he is buying time, or careless because he has misread the moment?
Governor Fubara appears to have chosen restraint over retaliation, silence over spectacle. While supporters call it statesmanship, critics see miscalculation, prompting PREMIUM TIMES to interrogate whether Mr Fubara’s attitude has steadied the polity—or ceded ground to forces determined to unseat him.
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Before the surprise adjournment, the Speaker of the Assembly, Martin Amaewhule, had defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) alongside 15 other lawmakers, leaving 10 in the Peoples Democratic Party, a strategic move by the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, to consolidate control of the two major parties in the state.
The Wike-backed lawmakers had also, before the adjournment, accused Mr Fubara of failing to present commissioner-nominees and budgets before the House. The claims were familiar, even predictable, from a legislature long locked in a power struggle with the executive. But the early adjournment—coming amid rising tensions—signalled something more worrying: a strategic pause, not a legislative break.
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When lawmakers reconvened for their first sitting in 2026, there was no pretence of reconciliation. The House slammed the governor with an impeachment notice—the third in less than three years—accusing him of gross misconduct, including failure to present the state’s 2025 budget.
The charge, however, carried a contradiction that quickly exposed the political undercurrents of the crisis. The same 2025 budget had already been passed by the National Assembly and signed into law by President Bola Tinubu during the emergency administration of Ibok-Ette Ibas. Why, critics asked, should a governor present a fresh budget when a legally enacted one was still running?
Power politics beyond the chamber
The timing of the impeachment notice was not lost on observers. It coincided with a period when Mr Wike, the lawmakers’ political leader, was touring local government areas across Rivers, openly rallying support against the governor.
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For Itoro Ebong, a lecturer in the Department of Public Administration at the University of Uyo, the message was unmistakable.
“For you to be the governor, you allowed a minister to host a political rally in the 23 local government areas in your state. That simply means he wants to test your authority as governor, telling you that you’re just a governor, but I own the political structure.”
In another political climate, such tours might have triggered confrontations. But Mr Fubara did not mobilise counter-rallies. He did not deploy state power. He kept quiet.
“That alone,” Mr Ebong noted, “if Governor Fubara were not a democrat, there must have been a crisis… but he keeps silent.”
Silence, in Rivers’ politics, is rarely neutral.
Restraint as virtue—or vacuum
Supporters argue that Mr Fubara’s attitude has prevented Rivers from sliding into violence. Mr Ebong insists the governor’s calm disposition has de-escalated tensions, not inflamed them.
“If Fubara were using violence, you would have seen serious calamities and casualties,” he said. “But no casualty in all the local governments visited by the minister… the governor chooses restraint.”
From this perspective, Mr Fubara’s silence is not weakness but deliberate statecraft—an effort to deny adversaries the chaos they might exploit.
Yet restraint also creates a vacuum, and vacuums are quickly filled.
A window opens—and closes
After the impeachment notice was served, four lawmakers initially pulled back, calling for an amicable resolution. It was the clearest opening for de-escalation since the crisis reignited. But the truce collapsed almost as quickly as it emerged.
The lawmakers later rescinded their withdrawal, accusing the governor of failing to use the “window for peace” and instead sponsoring media attacks against the assembly.
Whether that accusation holds is less important than its effect: it hardened positions. What might have been resolved quietly became public, bitter, and procedural.
For analyst and columnist, Jide Ojo, this was the moment Mr Fubara’s attitude became politically costly.
“On the surface, he looks gentle,” Mr Ojo said, “but when I hear some of the jabs he throws at public functions… you’re talking tough as if you have control of the whole situation.”
Mr Ojo likened the unfolding crisis to the infamous Anambra political imbroglio of 2003–2006, warning that godfather conflicts rarely reward restraint alone.
“I think that Governor Fubara went to a gun battle with a kitchen knife,” he said.
Godfathers, timing, and miscalculation
Mr Ojo argues that while the crisis is fundamentally about power—and Mr Wike’s desire to remain relevant—Mr Fubara has not helped his own cause.
“People who want to break ranks with their godfather usually wait till they establish firm control,” he said. “Probably in their second tenure.”
By confronting entrenched structures early, Mr Ojo suggests, Mr Fubara exposed himself without consolidating enough political cover. His attitude, he added, has at times appeared “nonchalant, mischievous, and treacherous”—a dangerous mix in a high-stakes power contest.
The governor’s later defection to the APC, widely seen as a search for federal protection, has so far offered little relief. The impeachment process has continued, underscoring the limits of party realignment when local power structures remain hostile.
The law steps in—late
Only after lawmakers formally asked the Chief Judge, Simeon Chibuzor-Amadi, to constitute an investigative panel did a court order surface, restraining the judge from receiving or acting on the assembly’s request.
For Samuel Asua, a political science lecturer at the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, the late judicial intervention explains Mr Fubara’s unshaken demeanour.
“Fubara is not shaken,” he said, noting that the allegations do not amount to gross misconduct under the constitution. “The matter has left the assembly.”
Mr Asua argues that Mr Fubara’s calm is informed by legal calculation.
“There are also legal windows for the court process to be extended. How do you expect somebody who already knows this to be shaken?”
But the timing matters. The fact that restraint came only after impeachment machinery had been activated feeds criticism that the governor’s legal strategy is reactive, not preventive.
Governing while embattled
Mr Asua believes the governor’s silence is also driven by fear of escalation.
“Fubara does not need to react to avoid escalation… to give the president, once again, another opportunity to declare a state of emergency,” he said.
That caution may be understandable. Yet governance does not occur in a vacuum. Prolonged brinkmanship has consequences—policy uncertainty, legislative paralysis, and public fatigue.
At some point, calm risks being mistaken for absence.
So—calm, calculated, or careless?
Mr Fubara’s attitude has undoubtedly prevented bloodshed. It has denied opponents the spectacle of chaos. But it has also allowed adversaries to dominate the narrative, set the pace, and define the crisis.
Restraint can be a virtue. Calculation can be wise. But in politics, timing is unforgiving. What looks like statesmanship today can be recast as indecision tomorrow.
Rivers State now waits—not just on courts or panels—but on whether its governor will continue to govern through silence, or find a way to reclaim initiative without lighting the fuse he has worked so hard to avoid.
That, more than impeachment arithmetic, is the real test of leadership in this crisis.
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