Tinubu Declared Emergency Rule In Rivers Despite Charging PANDEF To Broker Peace – Ambassador Igali

Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and all other elected members of the state assembly have all been suspended, despite the state’s declaration of state of emergency. The Chairman of Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Ambassador Godknows Igali, in this interview with Channels Television, says the Niger Delta group was shocked by the President’s decision because it came while they were still making peace moves between Governor Fubara and the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, who are in the centre of the controversy, as directed by the President himself. He also discussed the direction forward now that the President’s decision has also received the National Assembly’s approval.

&nbsp, Enjoy the excerpts…

We are aware that PANDEF had a strong response prior to the President’s declaration. He’s given a seal an approval, some amendments done, but some of the contending issues were still allowed and approved. What do you think of PANDEF, sir?

First and foremost, we would like to state that PANDEF as a body comprised of very senior citizens of this country and a law-abiding body will follow whatever is legitimate and has been decided by the government and approved by the National Assembly. Beyond court decisions, legal disputes, and other legal disputes, there is always room for peace, dialogue, and friendly resolution, which has been our main concern with this issue.

We’ve been on this, since the latter part of last year, from October last year. We’ve been attempting to reach a compromise, negotiate, and achieve peace between the two parties, and we’re making progress. I cannot say it was 100%, but there was progress. There was improvement each day.

When we met the president on the 11th of March, the President was briefed by a delegation, a very top-level delegation of traditional rulers, former governors, former members of presiding officers of the National Assembly, and so on. The President was given an update on the progress made. And I think where we had a slight surprise was the fact that we had told the President that this is what we are doing.

And the President praised PANDEF and said, “Oh, I’m glad you’re doing this, seeing the calibre of people.” Tell the governor to go and obey the Supreme Court judgment, and you continue with your peace efforts and get back to me on it. So, I believe that the Board of trustees and the PANDEF’s exco were initially uneasy that this effort had been made, and that state of emergency was declared just before the President could return.

Well, now that the state of emergency has been declared and the National Assembly has also confirmed it, it is to call on the people of Rivers State to continue to be law-abiding, to be peaceful because the National Assembly has also said that there will be negotiation, there will be discussions, they will set up groups that will try to intermediate and reconciliation which means that there’s still option for peaceful resolution, and we will encourage that peaceful resolution because by the end of the day, we want a win-win situation for the people of Rivers State.

It should be a win-win situation, not a one-win situation; instead, it should be the two parties coming to an amicable solution. In my preliminary remarks, let me conclude by saying that all conflict situations in the world as we are seeing, for example, in the Middle East and even Ukraine and Russia, negotiations, dialogue, and conference tables solve it all. Let’s all agree on topics and share our convictions about this nation’s institutions. It is not our place to start riding them and let us move forward and see how we can get an amicable solution to this problem that has lingered.

The tone, Ambassador, is quite different. I must admit from the communique that was issued after that emergency meeting, the board of trustees, which I understand was signed not by only you, we had Alfred Diete-Spiff, Obong Victor Attah, and others signing that statement. The declaration of state of emergency was vehemently rejected in that communication. In fact, it was called a betrayal of the Niger Delta people and an unprecedented assault on democracy. What has changed as a result?

Nothing has changed. We were given a directive from the president, and it came as a surprise because we were given one, and we were given a directive to go out and try your best to get back to me.

It came as a surprise to us that while that process was on, while the process of trying to get the assembly members for the governor to present his budget was still on this happened. You have your initial reactions to situations of this nature. When you reevaluate, you take further steps. We stated that PANDEF would continue to review what is happening and make additional decisions at the end of that communication. For now, we will urge peace.

Do you still believe that it was politically motivated and unconstitutional as it was stated in that statement?

Well, the lawyers are debating on the legality and otherwise of some of these steps, and they also are discussing them. In order to conclude, PANDEF stated that it would continue to monitor this situation and would take any additional legal action in this regard. For now, what is important is that we should all be committed to peace and see how we can move forward.

Some would say that some Niger Delta elders were present at that meeting. At the time of the meeting, they continued to support that president’s political intervention, but they later turned against it and started putting Fubara at risk. If that was what transpired at that time, what will be different this time giving the committee that the National Assembly has approved to provide a political intervention, you know, to the warring parties in this Rivers political crisis? What would change this time around?

Well, I would like to reiterate again, the fact that when you have conflicts of this nature, political conflicts, similar conflicts, positions keep changing, decisions are taken, and people go back and review their decisions and keep talking. You make the judgment necessary to bring the parties to a point of total agreement.

Yes, Mr. President did very well, tried to give his own fatherly intervention at the beginning. The two parties then made a variety of demands after they left. It is totally untrue, totally unfair, and would not be correct to say that the governor reneged. A decision was made at the meeting that the governor should leave the case.

If you go through the facts, he withdrew the court case, which has now become an albatross because some subsequent judgments are based on the fact that he withdrew the court case, which was the main issue in contention, and the other parties had the case still alive, and judgment was passed against him. Therefore, those errors were made on both sides, but the rear mirror causes a collision if you continue to look at it.

The attitude of PANDEF is always forward-looking, and that was why when we saw that progress was so snail pace, in October last year, we considered a committee made up of very senior Nigerians, the former governor of Akwa Ibom State, three former governors and 3 former leaders of the Senate to broker peace. We didn’t have to go back and say, “OK, you made this mistake,” “you made that mistake.” It was a matter of talking towards arriving at a peaceful resolution. Since that time, the state of emergency has been in place.

Since that time, the Senate of the country and the House of Reps have allowed what the President has done, an administrator has been appointed. The governor has been instructed to step aside in order to provide a forum for further discussion and to come to a decision-making option, along with his deputy and the assembly. I think we should focus more on what has happened now. It’s acceptable if the attorneys want to keep looking at the legality. It’s good that the country is established based on the rule of law which the President emphasized.

We leave that up to the attorneys because the law must always prevail. For us, the initial reaction of PANDEF was the fact that we were surprised that a state of emergency was declared because we were given a charge. Anyone can give you the highest charge, including a presidential charge in a temporary setting in any nation. When a President tells you, go and do this, you take it almost as a command. The Peace Committee was still operating as a result of the declaration of the state of emergency. And that was why we reacted in the manner we reacted, and that is quite appropriate and so legitimate as it is.

For the sake of our purposes, it is up to all parties to collaborate with any committee that is deemed to be in the forefront of peace-building efforts. We will give them all the support by encouraging the community leaders, encouraging the leaders of Rivers State and other stakeholders to work towards peace, and encouraging our young people not to take the law into their hands.

Some would say that godfatherism is at the heart of these political crises. What would PANDEF be proposing if you convened the committee today and received PANDEF’s invitation to speak? Considering that the feud is a significant factor, why would PANDEF be a key contributor to it?

I think that godfatherism is a cancer. We shouldn’t tolerate godfatherism in the state-building process, whether it is in Rivers or any other state. It is an anathema to proper democratic consolidation. What is important now, what’s before us, is what they call a fait accompli. The president, the country’s top political figure, the chief executive, has done some things. The next thing is that the National Assembly has concurred with him. Any party’s only legal recourse is left to them.

But for us, as a body, we are a body that is formed to promote dialogue, to promote, the reign of peace in the region and also defending, of course, the people.

A template has been created, and it is to discuss how to resolve this issue peacefully. If that option was not there, PANDEF would have reacted totally differently.

However, a choice has been made. It is what we were doing already, we were already on the verge of arriving somewhere. Let me state that at first, when PANDEF started to interact, the two sides didn’t want to talk to one another. I believe Nigerians need to be aware of this. &nbsp, And finally, the Committee of Elders succeeded in talking to the two sides. They ran into people who were close to the governor. They met with the governor himself twice. The two parties then agreed to arrange for the two principals to meet at a neutral ground after a meeting with the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory’s very close people.

Source: Channels TV