The presidency has reacted to claims in some quarters that President Bola Tinubu’s meetings with Governor Sim Fubara and Nyesom Wike to resolve the crisis in Rivers State was political.
According to the resolutions reached at the end of the meeting with Tinubu, all parties agreed that all matters instituted in courts should immediately be withdrawn.
In the eight-point resolution signed by Fubara, Wike, and other Rivers stakeholders, it was agreed that all impeachment proceedings against the governor should be dropped with immediate effect.
The parties involved also agreed that Martin Amaewhule should be recognised as speaker, while the 27 lawmakers who defected should be taken back as members of the assembly.
However, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), elder statesman Edwin Clark and other stakeholders have condemned President Tinubu’s eight-point resolution presented to Fubara and Wike.
They described it as highly unconstitutional and unacceptable.
But presidential spokesperson, Ajuri Ngelale, said Tinubu intervened in the crisis because he is the father of the nation.
“The motive of the president is clearly in this case not a political one. He is the father of the nation; he is the president of the federal republic of Nigeria; he is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces,” Ngelale said on TVC.
“It is the primary responsibility of his to ensure that there is peace and stability and security in all parts of the country.
“If he sees any sign that peace is breaking down in any part of the country, this is a president that will take action.
“And frankly, the resolution of the Rivers crisis is one that results from a series of interventions that he has made over the course of the last few months on this issue.
“Mr. President was fully ready and equipped to take a very hard action if this resolution had not been reached.”
Ngelale maintained that resolutions from the meeting have brought relief to the people of Rivers.
“It is to great relief of Rivers people and to Nigerians at large that you have a resolution in which nobody got exactly what they wanted; nobody got what they wanted,” he said.
“There was compromise involved. All sides of the political divide within that state have had to compromise to ensure that there is a fair resolution.
“Nigerians are going to see that the difference between what we have seen from this president as against previous presidents of the past 24 years is that when something is wrong — whether it involves a political party or not in any part of the country — as the father of the nation, he is going to call everybody to the table and he is going to get everybody to a common resolution in the interest of the Nigerian people.”
