The President of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), Afam Osigwe, has dismissed arguments supporting the suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy and House of Assembly members by President Bola Tinubu.
Naijaonpoint reported that the House of Representatives and the Senate, on Thursday, using voice votes, upheld President Tinubu’s state of emergency in Rivers State.
The federal lawmakers also upheld the suspension of Governor Fubara, his deputy and House of Assembly members.
In an interview with Arise News on Thursday, Osigwe (SAN) said the constitution was clear on how a sitting governor can be removed.
He stressed that the Constitution gave the House of Assembly the right to make laws concurrently with the National Assembly during a state of emergency.
According to him, even if intelligence made the President declare a state of emergency, it should be done right, in line with the constitution.
His words: “Sometimes in intelligence gathering, gossip can also amount to intelligence gathering. And I’m talking about empirically provable things to show a correlation. And time should have aided us in finding this. And I concede that there may be intelligence not available to the public. But let’s for a moment think that that intelligence was right. Has it met the constitutional threshold for the declaration of a state of emergency? And I still think not. We haven’t.
“And if you’re talking about removal and people say there’s a gray area, respectfully there isn’t. There’s no gray area. It may be a subjective reason as to whether in some circumstances the conditions for it have met. But generally, there’s no gray area.
“When you read section 188 of the constitution, it lays down on the circumstances in which a governor will cease to be a governor. And disingenuous argument that suspension is not a removal, it’s being clever by half. Because when you’re being suspended, your occupancy of that office for that moment is terminated. You can’t perform it. It’s a removal. It may be short-lived, but it’s a removal. And for any person to argue otherwise would amount to standing logic on his head. That’s a removal for a start.
“And if section 188 did not include a situation of state of emergency as one of the periods that a governor can be removed, then there’s no gray area. If you also go to section 11 of the constitution, as what could be done when a state of emergency is declared, it also shows you that the removal of governor under section 11:4 is not one of the things that is contemplated. So there’s no gray area.
“If you also look at section 11:2, I think, or 11:3, it talks about the state of assembly being able to make law concurrently with the national assembly in a period of emergency. And if I may ask a converse question, does it mean that when President proclaims a national emergency in the whole federation, that his office is also declared vacant or can be declared vacant? That’s not it.
“The emergency simply means that the President may take extraordinary measures to resolve the issue. So it is the mode of intervention. It is not to dismantle democratic bodies or persons who have been duly elected into that office. Otherwise, a president can turn a dictator overnight and at every whim, any little drop, any little provocation, he would say that a state of emergency situation has arisen. And that is what is frightening thing about Rivers State. “