Former Vice President and 2023 presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP),  Atiku Abubakar, has accused President Bola Tinubu of partisanship in the political crisis in Rivers State.

Atiku in a statement issued on Tuesday said the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State reeks of political manipulation and outright bad faith.

“Anyone paying attention to the unfolding crisis knows that Bola Tinubu has been a vested partisan actor in the political turmoil engulfing Rivers,” he stated.

Atiku was described as disgraceful, Tinubu’s “blatant refusal or calculated negligence” in preventing the escalation of the crisis in the state.

“Beyond the political scheming in Rivers, the brazen security breaches that led to the condemnable destruction of national infrastructure in the state land squarely on the president’s desk,” Atiku stated.

He said Tinubu cannot evade responsibility for the chaos his administration “has either enabled or failed to prevent.”

According to him, “It is an unforgivable failure that under Tinubu’s watch, the Niger Delta has been thrown back into an era of violent unrest and instability, undoing the hard-won peace secured by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua.”

Atiku regretted that “years of progress have been recklessly erased in pursuit of selfish political calculations.”

He stated that if federal infrastructure in Rivers has been compromised, the president bears full responsibility.

“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,” the former vice president added.