Impeachment Threats Against Fubara, Efforts In Futility, Group Asserts

A non-governmental organisation in Rivers State, the Gokana Good Governance Foundation, has said that the recent moves by the Rt. Hon. Martins Amaewhule-led Rivers State House of Assembly to impeach Governor Siminalayi Fubara over an alleged maladministration cannot stand, inasmuch as the lawmakers remain illegal occupants of the State Assembly.
This is contained in a statement released shortly after an enlarged general meeting of the group in Bodo City, recently.
The statement, signed by the group’s President, Secretary and Publicity Secretary, Dr. Burabari Kiebel, Barr. Churchill Kere and Comrade Abigail Kponabari respectively, stated that “At a time when economic issues top the priority list of every responsible government in Nigeria, prompting collaborative efforts between the executives and legislatures to ensure laws and policies that would alleviate the suffering of the masses are put in place in various states, one would focus on enacting laws to ease the immediate suffering of the masses and promote peace and development.
“However, rather than the embattled members of the Rivers State House of Assembly to focus on enacting laws that would take the masses out of penury, hardship and mis-governance of former governor and now Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Chief Nyesom Wike, they resorted to diminishing their political relevance by constantly putting down laws that supported the Wike’s failed administration, which they were part of simply because Wike was stopped from a third term arrangement through Governor Siminalayi Fubara.”
The group also said that while the parliaments in other states in the country are striving to make laws that promote development, the lawmakers in Rivers State are engaged in promoting darkness, adding that, “Otherwise, what has stopped them from passing many executive bills sent to them since October last year before they embarked on their path of perdition?”
The group noted that these executive bills, if passed into law, would see to the economic prosperity of Rivers State and even put infrastructural development and job creation on the fast track, “but over four months after, the people claimed to be Rivers State House of Assembly members representing the same people faced with economic hardship in today’s Nigeria have not even opened the file to at least see what it entails.
“This is because we are running an Assembly of one godfather. Rather than attending to these people-centred bills the Amaewhule-led coterie of political scoundrels have focused on amending and repealing laws that are of no relevance to alleviating the persisting economic challenges faced by the people of Rivers State.”
The group noted that “in their (lawmakers) usual rash and brash manner, they are threatening to commence another impeachment proceeding against the governor in their chase for vain glory. They have repealed by them several laws made by themselves, even when they are still not lawmakers in the eyes of the law. This is with particular reference to Section 109(1g) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.”
According to the group, “It is therefore naive for the supposed lawmakers to assume that such laws can take retrospective effect. There is prohibition law restricting retrospective laws.
“Why Amaewhule and his co-travelers always entangle in unconstitutionality? Why do they choose to allow themselves to be used as political tools and bootlickers for the purpose of destabilization just to satisfy the whims and caprices of one man, whose insatiable thirst for power and public wealth has altered the political landscape of Rivers State for bad and slowed down its developmental pace? How long will the people of Rivers State continue to be denied of effective legislation at this time of economic insecurity, while their supposed state legislators continue to play politics to the detriment of the prosperity of the state?”
The NGO, therefore, warned Amaewhule and other embattled lawmakers who it said, are sitting on a keg of gun-powder, to prepare for the wrath of Rivers people, adding that, “They have lost their taste as elected lawmakers and now turned over night to become law-breakers because of one man who, out of greed and rascality, is bent on doing otherwise.”