Anabs Sara-Igbe, the South-South Leadership Forum’s National Coordinator, revealed in an interview with Channels Television that Wike, the outgoing governor, was not pleased with Fubara, the incumbent, because Fubara questioned the state’s internally generated revenue (IGR) decline during Wike’s administration.
He continued by saying that there were rumors that Wike believed Fubara was preventing him from receiving large sums of money from the IGR—roughly N4 billion.
Additionally, Sara-Igbe implied that Wike had financial arrangements tied to specific projects and the bank during his tenure, which Fubara sought to investigate or change, leading to further tensions.
According to him, “Before Wike left government, the state (Rivers) was getting an IGR of over N10 billion; when he left, the IGR came down to N6 billion, and the governor, who was the accountant general when he was there, came to ask the question, Why is it coming down? And in the process, he engaged somebody who has passed through that process to please look at the books for me, why is my revenue coming down so that I can advise. Then the commissioner of finance got to Wike, and Wike got angry. Wike felt the money he’s collecting from the IGR; this boy (Fubara) has come to stop it, and he’s taking about N4 billion, so he has come to stop it. Secondly, all the federation accounts and allocations that are coming, Wike before he left tied all of them to one project or the other and attached them to the bank, so when the money comes, the money goes to the bank, and the bank collects whatever they want to collect and pays the contractors.”
