The Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminialayi Fubara, believes that the explosion near Hotel Presidential was a deliberate act aimed at creating a false narrative of heightened insecurity in the state.
The incident occurred during a protest by supporters of Minister Nyesom Wike, and the timing was not coincidental.
The governor suggests that the perpetrators intended to disrupt the meeting between the state government and the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, led by Senator Orji Uzo Kalu.
By creating a sense of insecurity, the perpetrators hoped to achieve their mischievous goals.
Although, the governor had clarified that he is not fighting anybody, but that he is defending the State against predators, and protecting supporters of the interest of Rivers State against those who feel that they own the life of others.
He insisted that the failed attempt to detonate the explosive device at the Hotel Presidential, a five-star hotel in Port Harcourt, was a deliberate ploy to strengthen the call for a state of emergency by haters who want to undermine the State to achieve their evil plans.
The governor, who spoke while hosting a delegation of the Senate Committee to Government House in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, alleged that the same people who had called on the committee not to visit the state had sponsored the act to score cheap points.
The Governor explained that some youths were hired to engage in a protest to demand for extension of tenure of former local government chairmen who have served out their statutory three-year tenure.
He said the protesters and their sponsors were aware that some honourable members of the National Assembly were guests at the Hotel Presidential, which is why they attempted to detonate an explosive device near the facility in order to give reason to support the call for a state of emergency when the matter is raised at plenary but they failed.
Fubara said: “As a matter of fact, let me tell you, I know of everything that is happening. Yesterday (Tuesday), they (protesters) were aware that you are in the State. So, there was an attempt to create a serious problem.
“There was a plan to detonate dynamite at the Hotel Presidential because you people were there. But this God that we serve, it happened that the man who was trying to do it, detonated it but just a few seconds after, it blew his hands off.
“The idea was that as you were hearing the state of emergency, it will be so that by the time they finish when you return to have your sitting tomorrow (Thursday), the debate will be from somebody from this State who called you people to tell you not to come. He will now raise the issue of a state of emergency, and say, after all, distinguished colleagues saw it happen while you were in Rivers State, that you saw what happened.
“But you see, when you are with God, even your child who is planning evil, will go and tell somebody that, God is with this man because he is clean, this is what my father is planning. That is what is keeping us in this State.”
He wondered why it seems that the law is silent or inactive to take its course over offenders because somebody appears to be bigger than the law on the agitation because there is nowhere in the country where tenure elongation for former local government chairmen has been an issue.