It is barely one week to the end of the first half of the year 2026, yet Rivers State does not have a budget that is meant to guide government business in providing services for the people.
Key Highlights:
Government primarily exists to enhance the quality of people’s livelihood. In other words, the essence of government anywhere in the world is to cater for the wellbeing of the people through well organized institutions.
In Nigeria as in many other climes, the institutions of government are basically the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary. These three institutions must be at their best for a government to function properly in providing services to the people.
The Executive takes the lead in formulating policies, while the Legislature enacts enabling laws to underpin the policies made by the Executive. The Judiciary on their own end provides interpretation of the laws enacted by the Legislature, consummating what can be referred to as the government’s value chain.
Whenever any of these institutions falters or fails in its responsibility, the masses feel or bear the brunt.
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In Rivers State, the Executive in exercise of it’s responsibility prepared the 2026 Appropriation bill which it transmitted to the Legislature for vetting and passage so as to enable the governor to sign the bill into law providing a legal framework for all government business for the year 2026.
But members of the Legislature who are invariably carrying the mandate of the people and who should ordinarily ensure a smooth passage of the appropriation bill to ensure that their constituents are well provided for became a clog in the wheel of progress by refusing to pass the budget for the Executive to swing into action in providing essential amenities for the people.
This is patently an anathema. Government exists not for the interest of a few, but for the interest of the majority. Regardless of the political stand off between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory FCT, Nyesom Wike for which the lawmakers of the Rivers State House of Assembly are prosecuting a vicarious war against the governor, the larger interest of Rivers State should have gained overriding focus.
The people need good roads, healthcare, education and other essentials that are generally referred to as dividends of democracy and provisions for all these can only be captured in a state budget.
By obstinately refusing to pass the budget, the lawmakers have positioned themselves as anti-people by denying the people access to meaningful livelihood. Yet they are the same people they will be returning to in a couple of months to seek renewal of their mandate in the 2027 general election!
Interestingly, over 80 percent of the lawmakers are in the All Progressive Congress, APC, the same party with Governor Fubara, a situation that ought to have engendered a more harmonious working relationship.
Effective governance has for long stalled in Rivers State, yet there is a chorus of standing on a mandate anchored on a renewed hope. One may therefore ask, how is the hope of ordinary Rivers people being renewed when they can’t access good healthcare and other basic essentials that would have been provided for in a budget that is denied.
Why is President Bola Tinubu prioritizing the interest of his minister Wike above the over two million residents of Rivers State . How is his Renewed Hope mantra renewing the hope of Rivers people as he continues to indulge Wike as the minister rides roughshod on institutions in Rivers State with careless abandon.
One stark evidence showing that things have gone awry in the state is the volume of refuse littered at many places in the state capital and beyond. There is a Rivers State Waste Management Agency, (RIWAMA) charged with the responsibility of regular evacuation of the refuse. The board and management of the agency was appointed by the then Sole Administrator, Ibok Ibas during the six months emergency regime.
However, it was alleged that the board does not take instructions from the governor even when they receive their regular subventions from the state government. The same story is told of the local government chairmen who are all proteges of the FCT minister. Thus they abdicate their responsibility, yet pocketing the accruing funds.
This is the story of Rivers State. One would have expected that having succeeded in denying Governor Fubara a second term ticket, that Wike would rein in members of the state House of Assembly to get back to work and approve the budget. But the lawmakers have been on extended recess while state craft totters.
