State of emergency in Rivers, done in bad faith – Atiku

As reaction continue to trail the imposition of State of Emergency in Rivers, Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, said the declaration of a state of emergency in the State “reeks of political manipulation and outright bad faith.”

Atiku Abubakar, in a statement personally signed by him, described President Bola Tinubu as a ” vested partisan actor ” in the crisis that engulfed the state in recent times.

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According to him, ” Anyone 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 — or calculated negligence — in preventing this escalation is nothing short of disgraceful.”

Atiku stated that “Beyond 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’s desk.”

He noted that President Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration has either enabled or failed to prevent.

“It is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua”

He regretted however, that the”Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.”

“If federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the President bears full responsibility.

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“Punishing the people of Rivers State just to serve the political gamesmanship between the governor and Tinubu’s enablers in the federal government is nothing less than an assault on democracy and must be condemned in the strongest terms.” he said.