In Buguma on Monday, a governorship candidate did something rare in Nigerian politics. He reopened a closed chapter of his own career and invited the public to read it his way.
Dumo Lulu-Briggs, the NDC candidate for 2027, told journalists he withdrew his Supreme Court challenge to Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s 2023 victory because the late Pa Edwin Clark asked him to. By his account, Clark warned that if the court annulled the election on the strength of his case, then-Speaker Martin Amaewhule would become acting governor, and Rivers people would not forgive him.
Clark also reportedly doubted that Fubara would win another ticket, given his feud with Nyesom Wike. Then, Lulu-Briggs says, Fubara personally pleaded with him. He insists none of this means he has given up his ambition to govern.
Restraint is a virtue, and a litigant who weighs public peace against private vindication deserves a fair hearing. But a story is not evidence, and this one is hard to verify. The man at the centre of the conversation, Pa Clark, can no longer confirm it. Fubara’s alleged private appeal has so far not drawn a public response. Whether annulment would truly have made the Speaker acting governor is Clark’s argument as relayed, not a ruling from a constitutional lawyer.
The deeper concern is what the story reveals about how disputes are settled. An election petition should rise or fall on evidence of what happened at the polls. If it can be dropped because of private appeals and succession arithmetic, then politics, not law, decides what the courts hear.
The timing deserves notice as well. The account surfaces as Wike’s camp courts Fubara, and as Lulu-Briggs publicly brushes aside Wike’s Rainbow Coalition. It casts him as the man who once spared the governor and now stands apart from the establishment’s deals. That is shrewd positioning, and shrewdness is not the same as truth.
Voters should neither dismiss the claim nor accept it on faith. Ask Fubara’s side to respond. Ask Lulu-Briggs for anything beyond conversation. Above all, ask what he would do with power on security, health, education and public money. A withdrawn case is history, and Rivers deserves candidates with a plan for the future.
