Akwa Ibom State Government has condemned the arrest of two principal staff of the State House of Assembly by detectives from the state police command last Friday over nonpayment of legislative entitlement to five lawmakers who were recently sacked by the leadership of the house.
Speaking on a local radio station phone-in Programme monitored in Uyo, the state capital, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Uwemedimo Nwoke, said the Police were not debt collectors.
Nwoke maintained that, “if the five sacked lawmakers felt they deserved to be paid, they should have gone to court, not getting police to start harassing the clerk and accountant of the state House of Assembly.”
It would be recalled that the Clerk of the  State House of Assembly, Mrs Mandu Umoren, and the assembly’s cashier, Mr Monday Akpan, were arrested by the Police last Friday over what sources said in connection with the “unpaid working imprest “ of five former lawmakers whose seats were declared vacant by the House in November last year.
Umoren and Akpan were invited to the state police headquarters  to give explainations surrounding the said payment.
The five sacked lawmakers, Hon. Idongesit Ituen, Nse Ntuen, Gabriel Tobi, Victor Udofia, and Otobong were said to have written a petition to the police insisting on the  payment of their imprest for the month of December. 
The command’s Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Odiko Macdon, however said, “the Assembly staff were released after making statements to the investigating officers “.
Speaker of the House, Onofiok Luke, had cited infringement of Section 109 (1) g (2) by the former lawmakers, who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), before he declared their seats vacant.