Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai has condemned Bola Tinubu’s declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State, warning of a repeat of the catastrophe witnessed during the 1962 Western Region crisis.
Mr El-Rufai, an estranged ally of Mr Tinubu, reminded Tinubu of his avowed opposition to emergency rule during the reign of then-President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013.
“Let us not keep silent while the slippery slope of replicating the events of emergency rule in the Old Western Region in 1962 unfolds before our very eyes,” Mr El-Rufai said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Old Western Region violent conflict was believed to have set in motion the catalogue of coups that later collapsed Nigeria’s democracy for several decades.
The former governor added, “As an opposition figure, Senator Bola Tinubu had made his voice heard against the decision of then President Goodluck Jonathan to declare a state of emergency in the North-East, even when that decision did not extend to the suspensiobmvn of elected officials and institutions.”
Condemning a state of emergency suspending Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy and all elected officials, Mr El-Rufai explained that the Nigerian Constitution “does not support it precisely because it is dangerous to our system of democratic federalism for an elected president to assume and exercise powers to suspend elected officials at the state level.”
Mr El-Rufai called Mr Tinubu’s proclamation of an emergency rule “a wanton aggression against democratic tenets and the rule of law.”
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