The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, has dismissed speculation that Governor Siminalayi Fubara was pressured out of the party’s governorship primary, saying the withdrawal was entirely the governor’s personal decision.
Speaking with characteristic firmness on Channels Television’s flagship political program, Politics Today, Yilwatda painted a picture of a governor who had been fully engaged in the nomination process only to step back at the final hour of his own volition.
“He pulled out; he stepped down. It is personal to him. He bought the forms, came for screening, passed the screening, and we were waiting for the primaries before he opted to step down,” the APC chairman stated, his words carrying the deliberate tone of a party leadership eager to close what has become an increasingly uncomfortable chapter in its internal affairs.
The facts, as presented by Yilwatda, are difficult to dispute on their surface. Fubara had, by all accounts, completed every procedural requirement demanded of an aspirant seeking re-election on the APC platform.
He purchased the party’s expression of interest and nomination forms, presented himself before the screening committee, and secured clearance, placing him in pole position to contest the primary. That he chose not to cross the finish line, the chairman argued, speaks to personal agency rather than external coercion.
Yet for many political observers tracking the sustained turbulence in Rivers State, the chairman’s framing raises as many questions as it answers. In Nigerian politics, the distance between a “personal decision” and a carefully engineered political outcome can be vanishingly thin, and in Rivers State, that distance has never appeared thinner.
Perhaps the most politically charged aspect of Yilwatda’s appearance was his categorical rejection of suggestions that the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, former governor of Rivers State, and Fubara’s onetime political godfather turned adversary, had any hand in shaping the governor’s fate within the APC.
“Wike is not in our party. He is in PDP,” Yilwatda declared, a statement that is technically accurate but which, to seasoned watchers of Rivers politics, barely scratches the surface of the minister’s expansive influence.
Wike himself appeared to relish puncturing that narrative. Speaking publicly on Monday while inspecting infrastructure projects in Abuja, the minister offered a remarkably candid and at times sardonic account of the political mechanics at play.
He openly mocked Fubara’s withdrawal from the APC race, endorsed Kingsley Chinda as the preferred governorship candidate, and went further still, claiming to reveal the contours of an alleged political arrangement reportedly facilitated by President Bola Tinubu himself.
According to Wike, the deal was straightforward: Fubara would abandon his second-term ambition in exchange for a halt to impeachment proceedings being pressed against him by the Rivers State House of Assembly.
“By collecting the form first, he didn’t show signs of gentlemanship,” Wike said, his words laced with the contempt of a man who considers the matter long settled. “We thought that Mr. President had been intervening severally and pleading with the legislature not to continue with impeachment.”
Whether or not one accepts Wike’s account, the fact that a serving federal minister nominally of a different party felt emboldened enough to publicly pronounce on the internal nominations of the APC in Rivers State speaks volumes about where real political gravity in the state currently resides.
For his part, Governor Fubara has been at pains to ensure his withdrawal is not read as the retreat of a man broken by political pressure. In a statement that was equal parts dignified and defiant, he cast his decision in the language of statesmanship.
“Let it be clearly understood that I stepped aside from participating in the upcoming Rivers State governorship election not out of weakness, fear, or surrender, but out of conviction and sacrifice so that Rivers State may move forward in peace and unity,” Fubara declared.
He emphasized his unwavering commitment to completing his current term and serving the people of Rivers State, rejecting what he described as any interpretation of weakness or capitulation. The language was deliberate and carefully pitched, a man determined to exit one political arena while preserving his standing in another.
Yet the optics remain unforgiving. Fubara is the only sitting APC governor who withdrew from the governorship primaries despite being constitutionally eligible for a second term. That singular distinction, no matter how it is framed, invites scrutiny.
Beneath the immediate drama lies a deeper and more consequential story: the extraordinary consolidation of political power by Wike in Rivers State, a state he no longer governs but increasingly appears to control.
With the emergence of Sam Ejekwu, another Wike ally, as the Peoples Democratic Party’s gubernatorial candidate, the minister now holds striking influence across both major parties contesting the 2027 governorship election.
His so-called “rainbow coalition,” widely understood to be operating in alignment with the Tinubu presidency, places him in a commanding position as a political kingmaker whose support could prove decisive when the votes are counted.
A minister serving in the federal government of one party while wielding decisive influence in the primary processes of another, all while the APC’s own national chairman publicly insists Wike has no role in the party’s affairs, encapsulates the contradictions that have long defined the high-stakes theater of Rivers State politics.
As the 2027 election cycle draws nearer, the political landscape in Rivers State grows increasingly complex. For Fubara, the immediate challenge is consolidating whatever goodwill his “sacrifice” has generated while navigating a tenure now operating under the long shadow of his own political retreat.
For the APC, the challenge is presenting a unified front in a state where its internal processes have been visibly disrupted. And for Wike, the challenge, if it can even be called that, appears to be managing, rather than pursuing, power.
What remains clear is that Rivers State politics has rarely been more fluid, more fractured, or more closely watched. Whether Professor Yilwatda’s assurances will put the speculation to rest remains to be seen. In a political theater as combustible as this one, the curtain rarely stays down for long.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The political situation in Rivers State ultimately boils down to one uncomfortable truth: Nyesom Wike wins.
Despite APC Chairman Yilwatda‘s insistence that Fubara’s withdrawal was purely personal and that Wike holds no sway over the ruling party’s affairs, the facts on the ground tell a different story.
A sitting governor, eligible, screened, and cleared, walked away from his own re-election bid. A minister from an opposing party openly dictated the terms of that exit, mocked the governor publicly, and now has allied candidates positioned to dominate both major parties in the 2027 race.
Whether through back-channel deals, legislative pressure, or presidential intervention, Wike has effectively determined the political fate of Rivers State without casting a single vote or holding a single office within it.
