Spending unappropriated revenue is a serious offence in a democracy. But that may not be applicable to us here where equality before the law is not only a myth but where our governors who are above the law can feely fritter away N300m. As if that is not bad enough, there are just too many ignoble fortune-seekers within the noble profession of law who will rather trade in chaos than in stability.
If you are in doubt, just take one look at the two-year old war against Fubara’s government. What you see are reckless elders fuelling the crisis by talking from both sides of the mouth; hungry and angry youths who expect crumbs following and hailing Fubara after every act of sabotage against his own government, television platforms that lionize clueless Fubara every morning while they smile to the banks in the afternoon with millions they haul in through news commercialization.
We cannot easily forget, Ugochinyere, an interloper from Imo State who became Fubara interpreter of court judgments.
And of course we now know those ignoble men in the judiciary who after collecting Fubara’s N300m gift, failed the people of the Rivers by not availing their governor of the proper interpretation of court judgments or bold enough to remind him the buck stops at his table. However, to make up for their betrayal, they are today blindly fighting the perceived enemies of Fubara – the executive, legislature and even the Supreme Court, moving from one television house to the other.
But it must be said that we have always had ignoble fortune-seekers in our judiciary. The first republic threw up Ben Nwabueze, the author of Unitary Decree 34 of 1966 which led to a civil war and whose effect continues to haunt the country. He also featured in the aborted third republic with his interim government decree that effectively aborted the third republic, paving the way for Sani Abacha, an evil dictator to wage a five-year war against Nigeria.
In the second republic, we had Chief Kehinde Sofola, an attorney general and one-time chairman of Body of Benchers who sadly admitted that “the primary duty of the judiciary is to protect the judiciary”. In the fourth republic, we have had an Abubakar Malami, attorney general who sabotaged Buhari’s anti-corruption war by attempting to smuggle and indicted fellow into the civil service, chased out of office the chair of the EFCC he had falsely accused of fraud, and misled President Buhari on the war against Nigeria by immigrant herdsmen whose illegal infiltration of reserved forest in the southwest he encouraged.
Now let us examine how the NBA chairman is prosecuting his defence of Fubara’s N300m gift.
Governor Fubara, unable to manage his own government, committed an error of judgment by opting to deal with Victor Oko-Jumbo-led three-man House of Assembly, despite Court of Appeal affirmation of a Federal High Court order that it was constitutionally wrong of him to deal with only three of the 32-man assembly. Fubara had insisted that 27 members of his House of Assembly do not exist. In February, the Supreme Court put an end to such conceit by declaring that: “What is clear is that the 27 lawmakers are still valid members of the Rivers State House of Assembly and cannot be prevented from participating in the proceedings of the House by the governor in cahoots with the four other members” and made it clear that “Sections 102 and 109 cannot be invoked in aid of this unconstitutional enterprise”.
The Supreme Court was to add that “As it is, there is no government in Rivers State… political disagreements cannot justify these attacks and contempt for the rule of law by the governor of a state or any person. What he has done is to destroy the government for the fear of being impeached”.
Afam Osigwe who slept all through two years of what the Supreme Court described as ‘Fubara’s despotic rule’ did not wake up from his slumber long after the fallout of the supreme court judgment with the aggrieved 27 House of Assembly members whose salaries had been seized for two years, demanding their pound of flesh by slamming the governor with impeachment notice.
Exploiting the ethnic divide as the first Ijaw man to be elected governor of Rivers State, Fubara was ready for a showdown. He publicly told jobless and marginalised Rivers youths who follow him around streets of Port Harcourt to wait for instructions. Less than 24 hours later, oil pipeline whether by fifth columnists as argued by his supporters, or his supporters, started exploding.
The president chaired a security meeting of his security chiefs. He promptly shared the intelligence at his disposal with the National Assembly and what followed was declaration of six months of state emergency and suspension of the warring governor and his state House of Assembly members jointly responsible for absence of government in the past two years in Rivers.
Since Rivers State allocation was ordered to be withheld by the Supreme Court following Fubara’s breach of one of the most serious impeachable offences in a democracy- spending taxpayers money without appropriation, a sole administrator needed to be appointed to ensure payment of salaries to essential workers such as teachers, medical workers and civil servants.
It was not until this time Osigwe woke up from his deep slumber. But that did not stop him from concluding that the situation in Rivers did not call for declaration of a state of emergency. Osigwe, who is not privy to the information at the disposal of the president and the National Assembly that have upheld the decision of the president insisted the president’s action was illegal. He also declared the president’s suspension of the governor and other elected members of the state assembly unconstitutional ignoring the fact that the constitution gives the president discretionary power to do whatever he deems fit to avert anarchy.
As an officer in the temple of justice, he did not wait to allow the courts that can make a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law to decide if the president’s discretionary powers cover suspension of the main obstacle to peace and the democratic process, i.e, the fumbling Governor Fubara and his vengeance-seeking lawmakers.
Afam decided to usurp the role of opposition leaders like Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi who are at liberty to exploit every action of the president for political gain like opposition politicians; Afam started moving from one television station to the other selling what can at best be described as warped logic.
But we now know, courtesy of the Rivers’ sole administrator, that Afam’s blind fury is all about Fubara’s N300m gift to NBA which the sole administrator insists must be returned. He anchored his argument on the fact that since the money does not belong to Fubara but to Rivers State programed to benefit from hosting the NBA’s conference, which Afam had unilaterally moved to Enugu as if Rivers has ceased to exist because of Fubara’s temporary absence, there was no basis to refund the money.
As if taking N300m that would have been enough to build an hospital or a cottage industry that could absorb some Rivers street boys was not enough assault on sensibility of Nigerians, the claim by the chairman of the NBA 2025 Conference Planning Committee, Emeka Obegolu’s (SAN), that the money was “an unconditional gift to support the event” was insensitive.
It is also not of any relief that while successive governors of Rivers including Fubara, Nyesom Wike, Rotimi Amaechi often try to outdo each other by bringing notable Nigerians to commission projects, the readily available jobs to the teeming youths of Rivers remain blowing up of oil pipelines when the elite want to blackmail the federal government or torching of government buildings, and visiting violence on each other when involved in intra-party feuds that have come to define every election in Rivers.
It is reassuring that credible voices in NBA including that of Andrew Emwanta, president of the African Public Interest Lawyers Union are already warning Osigwe who after sleeping all through two years of Fubara’s ‘despotic rule’. He accused him of starting a condemnation of the emergency move “barely two hours after the broadcast”. For him, “The proper thing to do, “to save the image of our profession, is for that money to be refunded. It’s Rivers taxpayers’ money. If you are not doing business with them, return their money.”
It is sad that NBA’s Afam Osigwe and some of his fellow travellers are not ashamed of joining PDP parasites whose elections Wike claimed he partly funded and their media enablers who regard Rivers as ATM without password.
