Former Vice President of Nigeria and 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has strongly condemned the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State, describing it as a politically motivated move and an act of bad faith.<\/p>\n
In his Facebook post on Tuesday, Atiku accused President Bola Tinubu of being a \u201cvested partisan actor\u201d in the ongoing political turmoil in Rivers, alleging that the president\u2019s failure to prevent the crisis was deliberate.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Bola Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers. His blatant refusal \u2014 or calculated negligence \u2014 in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful,\u201d Atiku said.<\/span><\/p>\n The former vice president further blamed the Tinubu-led administration for the security breaches that resulted in the destruction of national infrastructure in Rivers State, insisting that the responsibility rests solely on the president.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBeyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the President\u2019s desk. Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent,\u201d he stated.<\/span><\/p>\n Atiku lamented that the crisis has thrown the Niger Delta region back into violent unrest, undoing the peace efforts of the late President Umaru Musa Yar\u2019Adua. He described the situation as an \u201cunforgivable failure\u201d and a reversal of years of progress in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu\u2019s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability \u2014 undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar\u2019Adua. Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations,\u201d Atiku asserted.<\/span><\/p>\n He warned that punishing the people of Rivers State due to political power struggles between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and Tinubu\u2019s allies in the federal government amounts to an \u201cassault on democracy\u201d and must be condemned.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility. Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tinubu\u2019s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms,\u201d he averred.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Vice President of Nigeria and 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, has strongly condemned the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State, describing it as a politically motivated move and an act of bad faith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[125,1305,10124,755,8114,193,9855],"class_list":["post-22845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-atiku","tag-crisis","tag-fubara","tag-rivers","tag-state-of-emergency","tag-tinubu","tag-wike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22847,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22845\/revisions\/22847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}