Erstwhile National Publicity Secretary of the defunct New People’s Democratic Party, nPDP, and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze has told the 27 stranded lawmakers that they have ceased to be State Assembly members.
Eze, in a press statement circulated to media organisations on Friday, highlighted that the protracted crisis rocking Rivers State over the leadership of the House of Assembly has continued unabated as a result of actions of some politicians in the State who are hell-bent on using the judiciary to show power and might.
DAILY POST reports that the latest in the series of decisions from the Judiciary is the judgment of the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja, delivered on Thursday, which dismissed an appeal marked: CA/ABJ/133/CS/2024, filed by the Governor of Rivers State, Siminalaye Fubara, challenging the judgment of Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered on January 22, 2024.
Justice Omotosho had, while delivering judgment on a Motion on Notice marked FHC/ABJ/133/CS/2023, filed on the 29th November, 2023, by the Rivers State House of Assembly, and Martin Amaewhule (1st and 2nd Plaintiffs respectively), nullified the 2024 Rivers State Budget passed by the pro-Fubara lawmakers following the decamping of 27 PDP lawmakers to the APC.
The court also set aside the presentation and passage of the budget, just as it ordered Governor Fubara to re-present the budget to the House of Assembly under Amaewhule and 26 other PDP lawmakers who had defected to the APC.
Among others, Justice Omotosho ordered Governor Fubara to release all funds accruable to the Rivers State House of Assembly, and also barred the governor from interfering with the activities of the Assembly
