by Gabriel Amalu
The political interpretations of the judgments of the Supreme Court in the cases principally between the suspended governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara and the suspended members of Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Martins Amaewhule, are quite interesting. In one of the judgments, the Supreme Court affirmed the decisions of the Court of Appeal and the High Court presided over by Justice James Omotosho. The apex court affirmed that Governor Fubara had collapsed the democratic structure in the state, principally the legislative arm of the government, and declared several of his actions unlawful.
By the provisions of the 1999 constitution (as amended), the legislature is the first arm of the government, followed by the executive and finally the judiciary. But according to the three layers of the judiciary, Fubara had subjugated the legislature and had been governing as a despot. The apex court held that Fubara had not only demolished the physical structure of the state House of Assembly, but had collapsed the state democratic structure, by refusing to deal with 27 members out of the 32-member House of Assembly.
The courts came down hard on the governor for dealing with a four-member House of Assembly, who he quartered in the executive branch of the government, and who despite the clear provisions of the 1999 constitution, purported to pass the 2024 and 2025 budgets, amongst under illegalities. Despite the pronouncements of the High Court that the passing of the budgets and other legislative approvals by the four-man gang were illegal, Fubara continued to deal with them. He purported to have cleared the commissioners and the members of the Rivers State Independent Election Commission, before the four member gang.
As a governor who has desecrated the constitution which he swore to uphold, and who has been described as a despot by the apex court of the land, Fubara, but for the state of emergency, was a sitting duck for impeachment by the state House of Assembly members, under section 188 of the 1999 constitution (as amended). After all, the worst crime the executive can committee is to spend state money without authorization through an appropriation law, supplementary appropriation or monies charged to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the state.
A sin Fubara admitted he committed in the apex court, leading to the dismissal of one of the cases before the court. According to his lawyers, the unconstitutional conduct of the expenditure without authorization for year 2024 had been completed, and there was nothing the governor could do, to redeem himself. The matter of expenditure for 2025 which had been set in motion, and monies spent without legislative approval was what the governor wanted to remedy by re-representing the year’s budget before the state assembly.
It is strange that despite Fubara’s several constitutional misconducts, which has been affirmed by the highest court in our country, many legal opinions while commenting on Fubara’s suspension from office, makes light weather of those gross misconducts. For this column, every person who did not call Fubara to order while he reigned as a despot in Rivers State has no moral justification to rail against his removal, which is arguably justifiable in the circumstances of his peculiar mess.
Except if one views the gross abuse of power committed by Fubara, through the prism of politics, the findings of the Supreme Court concerning the state of democracy in Rivers State, was arguably enough justification for the president to exercise the powers envisioned in section 305, of the 1999 constitution (as amended), to declare a state of emergency in the state. The Supreme Court, per Justice Agim had said: “The concurrent findings of facts in the Court of Appeal judgment in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/CV/133/20249 (exhibit RSHA 5) indicate that some months after the 8th respondent was elected and sworn in as governor of Rivers State in 2023, he began to fear that, instigated by his political opponents, members of the Rivers State House of Assembly were planning or initiating proceedings to impeach him from office as governor of the state.”
He went on: “That to pre-empt his said impeachment, 8th respondent took several steps such as attempting to get the National Assembly to take over the exercise of the legislative powers of Rivers State from the Rivers state House of Assembly, preventing the Rivers State House of Assembly from sitting with its complete members or constitutionally prescribed quorum of one-third of the 32 members and arranged for initially four members and subsequently three members to be sitting as Rivers State House of Assembly outside the Legislative building of the Rivers State House of Assembly, withholding Rivers State House of Assembly funds, removing the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of the Rivers state House of Assembly, using caterpillars, bulldozers and other earth-moving vehicles and equipment to pull down, dismantle and destroy the legislative building of the Rivers State House of Assembly.”
Fubara prevented lawmakers and other staff of the state assembly: “from having access to the House of Assembly Complex to do official work and engaging in all these actions in disobedience of interim restraining orders of courts that were obtained by the said 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly in suits to restrain these actions.” A democratically elected governor who has desecrated democracy in the manner aforesaid, is not operating within the realms of law, and has constituted himself as an aberration unknown to the constitution, under which he pretends to govern.
His Lordship further said: “A government cannot be said to exist without one of the three arms that make up the government of a state under the 1999 Constitution.” Furthermore: “In this case, the head of the executive arm of the government has chosen to collapse the legislature to enable him govern without the legislature as a despot. As it is, there is no government in Rivers State.” As the courts hold, and lawyers like to quote, you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand. With a court finding that there is no democratic government in Rivers State, can it not be argued that a state of emergency already exists in the state?
Those who misled Governor Fubara into thinking and acting like Louis XIV of France, who famously declared “I am the state” are now goading him to live the illusion that he is a victim of the crisis that has bedevilled Rivers State, when in reality he is a major protagonist. When he declared that 27 elected members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, are only recognized at his pleasure, and went ahead to demolish the River State House of Assembly, I knew that the spirits beating the drums for him were of the dangerous type. The way out of the political stalemate in Rivers State, is through negotiation, not the shenanigan of false pretences.