The Rivers State governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2023 election, Tonye Cole, has said Governor Siminialayi Fubara, who will be reinstated today, is returning to the situation that led to the political crisis that rocked the state.

Cole, who spoke on Channels Television’s ‘Morning Brief’ yesterday, also said that the intervention of President Bola Tinubu was key in resolving the crisis that rocked the state. He said the fallout between Fubara and Barr. Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory FCT, Abuja was a crisis that landed the state into an “unfortunate state of emergency.”

Cole said Tinubu’s involvement led to a reconciliation, but has left Fubara politically constrained because with the current political atmosphere, he has again found himself boxed in by the same forces that limited his independence before the suspension. He noted that Fubara will be returning to the “status quo” that caused his disagreement with Wike.

He said: “Tomorrow we have the governor coming back and the scenario is like when he started, which is that he found out that he was totally surrounded and could not take decisions by himself… “I believe that we are finding ourselves back to the very, very beginning. Status quo reveals that he’s returned to the situation that caused him to begin his fight.