Ibok-Ete Ibas And The Big Question To Answer In Rivers State

 POLITICAL tensions have yet to dissipate fully in Rivers State. The relief that trailed the restoration of democracy in the state after six months of controversial emergency rule declared on March 18 has been tempered by the controversy over the tenure of the sole administrator, Ibok-Ete Ibas.

While the Rivers House of Assembly has asked Ibas to render an account of his tenure, Ibas is unwilling to do so. Ibas’s reluctance is strange and negates accountable conduct. Ibas should submit to a probe and make a full disclosure.

Ibas was appointed sole administrator by President Bola Tinubu amid a conflict between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor and erstwhile godfather, Nyesom Wike. The faceoff triggered a wider clash between Fubara and 27 members of the state HoA loyal to Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. Tinubu then imposed emergency rule, citing the need to safeguard the peace and critical national assets.

Ibas’s tenure ended on September 17. Fubara and the HoA were reinstated the following day. Yet, the retired admiral has kicked against the state HoA’s probe into his stewardship. This is wrong.

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“You didn’t appoint me,” he sneers, echoing Nigeria’s dark past when military jackboots trampled civilian oversight. His refusal to subject himself to scrutiny is not just confounding; it is an assault on the very principles of democracy.

In a country still scarred by decades of military rule when the electorate was considered as mere “bloody civilians” and expendable footnotes, Ibas’s stance reeks of defiant entitlement.

“The Assembly has no right to probe me,” he declares, conveniently forgetting that the funds he disbursed—billions in oil-derived allocations from the Federation Account and IGR—belong not to him, nor to the Presidency that parachuted him in, but to the teeming millions of Rivers people, who have the inalienable right to know how they were spent.

This is the point the Rivers HoA is making, which Ibas is unwilling to acknowledge.

As expected, other organisations are also asking questions. The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project has filed a Freedom of Information request demanding full financial disclosure during Ibas’s six-month emergency rule.

Transparency is not a courtesy in democracy; it is the oxygen that sustains it. Ibas’s position is therefore unacceptable.

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It is not about money. During the emergency rule, ostensibly imposed to quell “escalating political tensions and security concerns,” Ibas oversaw the conduct of local government elections in early September.

This is questionable. With the governor suspended, the assembly shut, and the state teetering on constitutional anarchy, polling stations and people lining up to vote are difficult to justify. That LG poll was a means to an end.

On March 18, saboteurs blew up the Shell-operated Trans-Niger Delta Pipeline, a criminality that directly precipitated the emergency declaration.

Yet, in six months of absolute authority, Ibas failed to apprehend even a single suspect and bring them to justice.

Not with the enormous tools available to him—his naval pedigree and access to federal intelligence, joint task forces, surveillance drones, and informant networks.

Ibas’s summons to Aso Rock by Tinubu on September 24, amid mounting calls for investigation, should not be a shield but a demand for accountability.

What is Ibas afraid of? Is it that he left Rivers more fractured? Opposition voices are right to demand that the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission descend like hawks.

Some have queried the assembly’s intentions, but as things stand, its resolution is no “fool’s errand,” as Ibas derides it.

It is democracy clawing back from the brink. So, Ibas should give a full account.

His defiance is a litmus test: Will the Tinubu administration champion a probe or indulge the admiral’s hubris? Let the inquest proceed, let the books be opened, and let justice prevail.