Fubara wanted to resign before rift with Wike worsened - Prominent Statesman speaks

The national coordinator of the South-South Leadership Forum, Anabs Sara-Igbe, has said Governor Siminalayi Fubara offered to resign his position before the crisis in Rivers state worsened.

Speaking on Saturday, December 16, in an interview on Channels TV, Sara-Igbe, a former spokesperson for the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), said the governor opted to resign because apart from the way forces above him prevented him from asserting his independence, he didn’t have enough control over the state’s funds and had difficulty running his government.

Sara-Igbe stated that but for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP's) intervention, Governor Fubara would have resigned.

"The money coming from the federation account, Wike tied the money to one project or the other. So, when the money comes, it goes to the banks and they collect theirs from it and pay the contractors. Of course, we didn’t even know the cost of the contracts, so when this governor felt, ‘how will I run a government when I don’t have the resources’, the minister became hostile to the governor and the governor said ‘okay, let me resign if that is the case’.

The PDP elders prevailed on him not to resign, thinking it would be messy."

Meanwhile, the former chairman of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Lauretta Onochie, said President Bola Tinubu intervened in the feud between Wike and Fubara "because of concerns for the well-being of the people of Rivers state". Onochie stated this via a post on her verified X (formerly Twitter) page recently.