Fubara: Tinubu Acknowledges Over 40 Cases Against Him as Price of Democracy

By Eshiorameh Sebastian in Abuja

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has stated that over forty lawsuits filed to challenge his declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State were a natural and acceptable part of the democratic process.

While defending his decision to suspend the state’s government as necessary to prevent a “colossal failure,” the president argued that such legal dissent is precisely “the way it should be in a democratic setting.”

The president’s comments came in a national address on Wednesday announcing the end of the six-month emergency rule, which will see Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the state assembly members reinstated to their offices from 18 September 2025.

The emergency was declared on 18 March 2025 after a bitter political war between Governor Fubara and the Rivers State House of Assembly led to what the president described as a “total paralysis of governance.” He detailed how the assembly was split, with 27 members opposing the governor and only four supporting him, making it impossible to pass a budget or govern effectively.

“The summary of it for context is that there was a total paralysis of governance in Rivers State,” Tinubu said, noting that even the Supreme Court had observed in a judgment that “there was no government in Rivers State.” He stated that the situation had become so dire that critical economic assets, including oil pipelines, were being vandalised, and all attempts to negotiate peace had failed.

Faced with this, the president said he had no choice but to act. “It therefore became painfully inevitable that to arrest the drift towards anarchy in Rivers State, I was obligated to invoke the powers conferred on me by Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution,” he explained.

However, this extraordinary decision was met with immediate and fierce legal opposition. In his speech, the president openly acknowledged this dissent, revealing that critics had filed “over 40 cases in the courts in Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Yenagoa, to invalidate the declaration.”

Rather than criticising the plaintiffs, the president framed this flood of litigation as a sign of a healthy democracy. “That is the way it should be in a democratic setting,” he stated. “Some cases are still pending in the courts as of today.”

Despite the legal challenges, President Tinubu stood firmly by his decision, arguing that the power to declare an emergency is an “inbuilt constitutional tool” for moments of severe crisis. He insisted that the situation in Rivers had met that high bar, requiring “extraordinary measures to return the State to peace, order and security.”

“Considered objectively, we had reached that situation of total breakdown of public order and public safety in Rivers State,” he said. “It would have been a colossal failure on my part as President not to have made that proclamation.”

The president announced that the emergency is being lifted because intelligence reports now indicate a “groundswell of a new spirit of understanding” among the warring factions in the state, making the extreme measure no longer necessary.