As National Assembly Takes Over Rivers Legislature The National Assembly’s takeover of the legislative functions of the Rivers State House of Assembly accords with the public mood, but the federal legislature must move to forestall impunities like the one that created the present situation. Vincent Obia writes The Senate on Thursday concurred with the House of Representatives to immediately assume legislative functions for the troubled Rivers State House of Assembly. The Senate’s decision, which came more than two weeks after the lower chamber had voted in favour of the takeover, largely accords with public opinion on the matter. The issues prior to the National Assembly’s assumption of legislative functions for Rivers State are already public knowledge. Five members of the state House of Assembly had on July 9 illegitimately assumed the legislative role of the 32-member legislature with the sole aim of impeaching the Speaker, Mr. Otelemaba Amachree. But the attempt failed following the fierce resistance of the 27 other legislators loyal to Amachree. There was, in the process, a melee and fisticuffs that resulted in injuries to some of the Assembly members. The incident, which was widely condemned, was, however, not without precedent in the country’s recent history. It had happened in a couple of other states in the Fourth Republic. But the row in the Rivers Assembly is notoriously different in many ways. It is the first time since the Fourth Republic in 1999 that the National Assembly would take over the legislative functions of a state assembly. And it is the first time since after the July 10, 2003 police coup against Governor Chris Ngige in Anambra State that the police hierarchy would make itself available at such a level to politicians for use in high profile hatchet jobs. The Rivers State Police Command under Commissioner of Police Joseph Mbu was openly partisan and rejected a request by the Speaker for security beef up before the sitting of the Assembly that July 9. And when Mbu deigned to send his men to the House of Assembly complex, it was to aid the invasion of the state legislature by hoodlums who were hired assist in the illegal attempt to unseat the Speaker. That would have been an apparent first step to the impeachment of the state governor, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, whom the police commissioner has seemed to see as a political enemy. Besides, in the anomie of July 9, the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, and his wife, Patience, would appear to have shown a level of cautious support for illegality that the country has not seen in its recent history. An earlier visit to Rivers State by the president’s wife had been a dress rehearsal for the putsch by the five lawmakers led by one Evans Bipialaka, who represents Mrs. Jonathan’s birthplace of Okrika in the Assembly. That controversial trip had caused a near lockdown of Port Harcourt, the state capital, including restrictions on the movement of the governor, who is the chief security officer of the state. Then, curiously, soon after the incident at the Assembly, while the whole country bemoaned the show of shame by the renegade lawmakers, the Presidency’s immediate response was to blame Amaechi for the crisis in the legislature. A few days later, Mrs. Jonathan told visiting clerics from the South-south “the genesis of this problem,” her grouse against Amaechi, concluding, “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, whose recent capture of the leadership of Peoples Democratic Party in the state via a controversial Abuja High Court ruling – and allegedly with the active support of the president – is believed to lie beneath the crisis, also condemned Amaechi. He, expectedly, sidestepped the conduct of the five renegade legislators. As all these went on, presidential aides Reuben Abati and Doyin Okupe took it upon themselves to equivocate on the enormity of the trouble brewing in the state. Okupe struggled to diminish the crisis as a localised problem that did not threaten the country’s democracy, while Abati fought hard to tell the world that the president was not involved in the Rivers crisis. They told grievous lies that everyone saw. The Senate stated in its report after a fact-finding mission to Rivers State, “The crisis in the Assembly on July 9, 2013 was the expression of deep-rooted political crisis occasioned by the alleged highhandedness of Governor Amaechi and the perceived undue interference with the political and security structure of the state by the president, his wife and the national leadership of the PDP.” What all these tend to show is that the Rivers State governor had allegedly sinned, not against the law, but against some powerful individuals, who decided to make the state ungovernable for him using very unlawful means. It is a dangerous precedent for the country’s democracy for people to engage in acts like these and do not get punished for what they have done. Therefore, besides making laws for the state, the National Assembly must take deliberate steps to ensure that the catalogue of impunities that has brought Rivers State to the present situation is never allowed to occur again. The danger signs of the developing culture of impunity are everywhere for all to see, especially, on the road to 2015. How the federal legislators appreciate and deal with this problem would speak volumes about their commitment to the stability of the country and its democracy. Opys Newsonline
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 09:31:47 +0000
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