State of emergency in Rivers, an assault on democracy, says Atiku

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has described the declared state of emergency in Rivers as an “assault on democracy”.

Abubakar, in a statement he issued on Tuesday in Abuja, also described it as a “political manipulation and action taken in bad faith”.

He alleged that anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knew that President Bola Tinubu had vested interest in the state.

Abubakar decried the calculated negligence in preventing the escalation tension in Rivers.

He said that Tinubu should have ended the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state.

H said that the Niger Delta had been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability — undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.

“Years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.

“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.