Siminalayi Fubara withdrew from the Rivers APC governorship primary a day before the vote, saying the move was made out of conviction and sacrifice for the state to move forward in peace and unity. By May 21, Kingsley Chinda had emerged winner of the primary after polling 268,497 votes.
Bitrus Kwamoti declared Chinda the winner after he stood alone in the contest, following the withdrawal of Fubara, Tonye Cole and George Kelly. The result handed the former lawmaker an uncontested path through a race that had already been stripped of most of its field.
Nyesom Wike said on Monday that he was not surprised by Fubara’s withdrawal and said the governor ought not to have collected the APC nomination form in the first place. Speaking while inspecting infrastructure projects in Abuja, Wike said an agreement had been reached that impeachment should be dropped and that Fubara should not be talking about a second tenure. He also said Chinda had the experience needed to govern Rivers State.
The exchange lands in the middle of a political fight that has stretched on for months and has already driven some lawmakers to try to impeach the governor. Wike had previously said he would oppose Fubara’s re-election bid, and he has accused him of breaching a peace agreement that was said to have followed intervention by Bola Tinubu.
That is why Fubara’s withdrawal matters now: it does not end the rift, but it does show how tightly the Rivers contest remains tied to the wider struggle between the two men. Ann-kio Briggs, reacting to Chinda’s participation, asked why someone who is in the PDP would be contesting on an APC platform and said the situation suggested something was fundamentally wrong with what the APC was doing.
