President Bola Tinubu received yesterday behind closed doors the ex-Rivers State administrator, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd.), at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
It followed the President’s receiving Governor Sim Fubara as the Rivers State House of Assembly resumed sitting and went ahead to probe financial transactions made in those six months of state of emergency.
In its first plenary since the lifting of emergency rule, the Assembly, led by Speaker Martin Amaewhule, voted to probe expenditures from the consolidated revenue fund while in office during Ibas’s time. Legislators vowed to review contracts awarded and released funds during the period.
Countering, Ibas called the resolution a political distraction, insisting the Assembly lacked constitutional authority to call him out. In the defense of the past head of the navy, in a statement through his Senior Special Adviser on Media, Hector Igbikiowubu, he argued that he was appointed by the President and subject to monitoring by the National Assembly essentially making any state-level probe a challenge to both organs.
Tinubu had on March 18, 2025, issued a state of emergency in Rivers amid escalating political and security crises. Governor Fubara and his deputy Ngozi Odu, along with all elected legislators, were suspended, and Ibas was appointed to be in charge of the state until the state of emergency rule expired six months later.
