Will Fubara Finally Find His Missing ‘Sim’… As He Reaches Out to Wike for Settlement?

Siminalayi Fubara has always cut a reluctant figure in power: measured, soft-spoken, a man seemingly caught in a political orbit he neither charted nor desires.

Now, in a twist both inevitable and revealing, the embattled Governor of Rivers State appears to have chosen the path of truce, reaching out to his estranged political godfather, Nyesom Wike, in what may be the last act in a high-stakes political theatre.

The setting was neither secret nor subtle. Wike, now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, publicly confirmed what many had only whispered—Fubara, accompanied by two APC governors, had come to him to sue for peace. “He said he wants peace, and I also want peace,” Wike declared with a calculated blend of candour and control. Yet, peace, in Wike’s lexicon, comes with preconditions. The subtext was clear: reconciliation requires humility—and perhaps capitulation.

To the casual observer, the Rivers drama is Shakespearean in its architecture: betrayal, loyalty, ambition, and tragedy. But at its core lies a more contemporary Nigerian theme—the price of political inheritance. Fubara, once a loyal technocrat, was elevated by Wike’s machinery to the governorship. The expectation was simple: continuity, not confrontation. But power, as it often does, altered the dynamics.

President Bola Tinubu’s controversial decision to declare a state of emergency in Rivers, suspend Fubara, and appoint a sole administrator, signalled how far the rift had festered. With protesters on both sides and the state’s democratic institutions in limbo, Rivers became a national concern.

Yet Fubara’s latest remarks betray a man unburdened, if not indifferent. “If I have my way, I don’t wish to go back there,” he said recently at a service of songs for the late Edwin Clark. “My spirit has left that place long ago.” It was more confession than defiance—a rare moment of political honesty.

So, what changed?

Perhaps it was a political survival instinct. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was clarity. Whatever it was, reaching out to Wike suggests Fubara knows the game isn’t about who wins, but who endures. In Rivers politics, that difference is everything.