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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, has expressed his disappointment with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), saying that the party had failed him and his supporters in the state.
Fubara, who was elected on the platform of PDP 2023, stated this while receiving members of the Senate Committee on Privatisation, led by Senator Orji Kalu, at the Government House, Port Harcourt, on Wednesday.
Among the committee members was Senator Abba Moro, a former Minister of Interior and incumbent Senate Minority Leader, whom Fubara acknowledged as a leader within the PDP.
The governor said he would not adhere to party protocols, adding that PDP had let the state down.
He said he and his supporters in Rivers State are now operating as a movement to defend democracy, rather than functioning as members of a political party.
“In our state today we are no longer doing party. We are doing a movement, so you don’t blame me if I don’t go to the side of the party too much.
“The party has failed us here, so what we are doing here is to stand with our two legs on the soil of Rivers State, so that we can defend democracy.”
Fubara’s stance came few hours after the detonation of an explosive by a man in Port Harcourt, on Tuesday.
The yet-to-be-identified man, was alleged of trying to blow up the Presidential Hotel, a highly-rated hospitality facility in the state.
Speaking on the incident on Wednesday, Fubara said the failed attacker had targeted the facility that was accommodating high-profile individuals, including the members of the Senate committee, to justify the call for the imposition of a state of emergency in the state.
“The idea was that as you heard the state of emergency, it will be so that by the time they finish when you return to have your sitting tomorrow (Thursday), the debate will be from somebody from this state who called you people to tell you not to come. He will now raise the issue of a state of emergency, and say, after all, distinguished colleagues saw it happen while you were in Rivers State, that you saw what happened.
“But you see, when you are with God, even your own child who is planning evil, will go and tell somebody that God is with this man because he is clean, this is what my father is planning. That is what is keeping us in this state,” he said.
The governor wondered why the law was silent or inactive to take its course over offenders, because somebody appeared to be bigger than the law.
He added that there was nowhere in the country where tenure elongation of former local government chairmen had been an issue.
Fubara clarified that he was not fighting anybody, rather he was defending the state against predators and protecting supporters of the interest of Rivers State against those who feel that they own the lives of others.