The FIGURE Feminist Movement stands against the installation of a military administrator in Rivers State by the Federal Government in a Presidential Address.
We want to state frankly that President Tinubu’s approach to governance in this Rivers state crisis is nothing short of reckless, as is his usual approach to governance.
This declaration continues the chain of elitist arrogance with which the General Tinubu regime handled the #EndBadGovernance protests in August and October 2024, and further confirms him as a tyrant rather than a leader.
For us in the movement, this declaration is a failure of governance and we believe that if President Tinubu cannot grasp the basic principle that real peace grows from justice, not force, then he has no business leading the country and should be removed by the Nigerian people.
Despite selling itself as a stabilizing force, the Tinubu government has not only been a biased party in the Rivers State governance crisis, but also in the governance crisis involving the Lagos State House of Assembly and the Osun State Local Government elections.
For us, local government autonomy should not be a ploy by the Federal Government to use the local governments against the state government or vice versa, but should be an opportunity to get the peculiar welfare issues of every locality in Nigeria addressed locally and democratically.
On behalf of the Nigerian people, we wish to state that we reject a President that behaves like a petty despot, and trades in fear and intimidation, as we know that such stubborn obstinacy in leadership only deepens the sense of betrayal and anger among those he purports to serve. It does not stabilize in any way!
Every state where the Nigerian Army has been mobilized to keep the peace are yet to know peace ’til date. This declaration has exposed Tinubu as a destabilizing force rather than a stabilizing presence in Nigeria’s politics, and we call on the Nigerian people to organize and fight back on the streets until he is removed.
Maybe it might have been possible to take President Tinubu’s lip service about stability serious if the same government did not supervise the shooting and jailing of protesters, including minors, during the peaceful #EndBadGovernance protests to demand for better life for Nigerians, but it is hard to take seriously the prescriptions of a leader who consistently evades accountability on critical governance issues.
The President’s long track record of political maneuvering, coupled with his apparent detachment from the lived realities of marginalized Nigerians, calls into question his credibility on matters of justice and human rights like the issue in Rivers state where he is trying to present himself as an unbiased judge.
Instead of demonstrating genuine concern for the welfare and democratic rights of the people of Rivers State, President Tinubu is only grandstanding for political gain in an opportunistic move that does more to polish his image and acquire political and electoral control of Rivers State, rather than to serve the public interest.
This is in light of the fact that the intending Godfather of Rivers State, who openly stands as one side of the crisis, is a political appointee of the president and the Minister of the FCT who was not suspended.
The President’s declaration of a state of emergency is not only paternalistic and dismissive of the legitimate concerns of Rivers State’s residents, but his framing dissent as mere “vandalization” or “criminality” downplays the complex socio-economic grievances that have fueled the crisis of godfatherism rocking Rivers State. Contrary to the President’s claims, the mere declaration of a state of emergency is unlikely to produce stability in Rivers State.
Quite simply, when armed forces roll into a region, the local population often feels threatened not reassured. If one looks at past declarations of emergency in various parts of the country, the outcomes have typically been more chaos and a lingering sense of injustice. No extensive data is even needed here; common sense and everyday observation suffice to show that militarized crackdowns rarely yield the peace they promise, as we have started to see from the events that followed the declaration.
Rather than risk a new upsurge of militancy in Rivers State, a more constructive path would involve empowering local communities through a more democratic variety of the local government autonomy that uses democratic assemblies and grassroots decision-making structures to strengthen local governance and includes everyone, particularly women and youth.
In fact, constitutional federalism recognizes multiple layers of governance, each with its own jurisdiction and autonomy. The President’s own words—“it is a grave insult on the constitution to treat the legislature as a depot”— is self-contradictory because this acknowledgment of the importance of legislative independence is being made by the president while simultaneously undermining it in the same breath by imposing a sweeping emergency measures.
No centralized force can meaningfully address local grievances and systemic inequalities at the heart of the crisis! Only the decentralized and distributed actions of the masses of the people can administer governance in a way that takes care of everybody, and we wish to use this opportunity to call on the Nigerian people to rise in protest to end the Tinubu Dictatorship and install this kind of governance.
ALUTA CONTINUA, VICTORIA ASCERTA!
