The Presidency on Saturday said President Bola Tinubu did not remove Rivers state governor, Siminalayi Fubara from office as some people have erroneously claimed.
It said rather the president only suspended him from office for six months until normalcy is restored in the state.
Speaking on Arise TV, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy also faulted those condemning the action of the president, urging them to go and challenge it in the court of law.
According to him, while some senior lawyers such as Chief Afe Babalola have come out to say the president did the right thing, other senior lawyers have also condemned his actions, describing it as undemocratic and dictatorial.
“I don’t know why Nigerians, sometimes we always respond to things in a knee-jerk manner. I don’t mean that as an insult, but that is the reality of our country. Most of the times something happened and people just follow whoever speaks first. If somebody comes out to say this thing is bad, everybody too will now come out to say ‘it is bad’ without having to sit down and reflect ‘is this thing really bad?’.
“Look at Rivers, if the president had not intervened, perhaps things would have been worse by now. The week he intervened, the legislators were saying they were going to impeach the governor; the governor was saying he was going to bring his budget to them and all kinds of things were happening and the state was already tilting to some forms of crisis”.
“If the assembly had been allowed to impeach the governor, anybody can foresee with all the sabre-rattling going on within the state, maybe Rivers state will be a state flowing in blood. Nobody wants that”.
“Of course, if you judge by what the governor said when all the crisis was on, urging his supporters to wait for his signals. On the day the emergency was imposed, there were some attacks on our pipelines. Rivers state harbours our oil resources and gas. The state is like the oxygen to this country. The bulk of the money we have from oil imports is from that state. So, no leader will ever wait for the state to burn before acting. So,the president acted to avert any unforeseen crisis. That was what he did”.
“He suspended the governor, he didn’t remove him. He said house of assembly go and rest for the next six months, Mr. Governor, also go and rest for the next six months. Try and reach some truce very urgently so that the state can regain its peace”.
“Those who are saying the president has done wrong, it is their point of view. They are not absolutely right. It is only the court of law that can determine whether what the president has done is wrong or it is right. But as of now, the jury is still out. So, those who are saying the president is wrong, let them go and challenge it in the court of law and let’s see what the court will say at the end of the day”.
