Rivers State Emergency Is About Power, Not Security – Atiku

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has said President Bola Tinubu’s state of emergency in Rivers State was declared to capture power and not based on security concerns.

Naijaonpoint reported that Atiku, along with Peter Obi, Nasir El-Rufai and Rotimi Amaechi, convened a world press conference to address the Rivers political crisis and state of emergency, on Thursday.

Addressing the press, the former presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the political crisis in Rivers State could be addressed without a declaration of a state of emergency.

Atiku stressed that all security conditions listed by the President to justify the state of emergency were supposed to be addressed by the federal government.

His words: “This State of Emergency declaration is not about security—it is about power. The disagreements within Rivers State stem from the defection of 27 Assembly members from the PDP to the APC, their loss of seats under constitutional provisions, and the subsequent political manoeuvring to undermine the Governor’s mandate.

“Rather than allowing the law to take its course, the federal government has engineered a crisis to justify this unconstitutional action. The excuse of pipeline vandalism—an issue squarely under the control of federal security agencies and privately contracted security firms—is laughable. If security breaches are the concern, the first question should be: Who controls the police, the military, and the DSS? The Governor or the President?”