Pro-Wike Lawmakers’ Order Against Fubara On Budget Spending Unenforceable – APP

An opposition party, Action Peoples Party(APP) l, has tackled the Rivers State House of Assembly over their directives to Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State to stop spending funds from the consolidated revenue of the state. On Monday, the Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Martin Amaewhule, wrote to Governor Fubara, stopping him from […]

An opposition party, Action Peoples Party(APP) l, has tackled the Rivers State House of Assembly over their directives to Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State to stop spending funds from the consolidated revenue of the state.

On Monday, the Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Martin Amaewhule, wrote to Governor Fubara, stopping him from spending funds from the state Consolidated Revenue Fund.

The development followed the expiration of the seven-day ultimatum given to the governor by the lawmakers loyal to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, for him to submit the 2024 budget afresh.

The fresh presentation of the budget was among the conditions for peace, signed during a parley held at the instance of President Bola Tinubu to reconcile the factions of Wike and Fubara, in Abuja.

Weighing in, APP, in a statement signed by its national deputy publicity secretary Emeka Uwazurike, described the resolution as a joke taken too far.

The party dismissed the said resolution as another legislative rascality by ex lawmakers whose seats have long been declared vacant by a court of competent jurisdiction.

It noted with emphasis that the said N800b budget for 2024 fiscal year for which the lawmakers had ordered the governor to represent was duly passed by the then constitutionally recognised Edison Ehie-led Rivers state House of Assembly.

The party said representing the budget which is already an Act would amount to gross constitutional breach and disservice to the people of Rivers state

APP said: “As far as the order sacking the Martin Amaewhule leg group of former lawmakers has not been vacated, the 27 including their speaker Martin Amaehule remain sacked and the governor has no business with such group.

“They deserve to be ignored. If not, it means that one day a group not known by law can wake up and ask the governor not to operate from Government House because he did not attend their new yam festival.”

The party described the said resolution as another calculated attempt to distract the governor from doing the good work many can now attest to for the oil rich state .

Fubara, in 2023, presented an Appropriation Bill of over N800bn for the 2024 fiscal year to the lawmakers loyal to him, then led by Edison Ehie, for approval.

Barely 24 hours after the budget presentation, the four-member Assembly passed it and presented it to Fubara for assent.

Ehie, then factional Speaker of the House, later resigned and was subsequently appointed Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt, by Fubara.

After the peace agreement, the Amaewhule-led Assembly waited for the governor to re-submit the budget.

The crisis, however, got worse, leading to the pro-Fubara lawmakers electing Victor Oko-Jumbo as factional Speaker.

The governor declared that the pro-Wike lawmakers were no longer known to the law, as the court had restrained them as lawmakers in the state, following their defection to the All Progressives Congress.

The lawmakers appealed the judgment and the Court of Appeal, on July 4, quashed the ruling of the high court and reinstated the pro-Wike lawmakers as members of the state House of Assembly.

At their Monday, May 9 proceedings, they gave Fubara a one-week ultimatum to present the budget.

The Assembly, at its fourth Legislative Sitting, held at the Assembly Quarters on Aba Road, on Monday, said Fubara violated the Constitution by spending from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the state without an appropriation law.