We watch with great awe the dark and heavy clouds that have begun to gather in Rivers State, which may turn into a raging storm that will sweep away the immediate and remote actors in our democratic experiment.
The current political imbroglio started with accusations and counter accusations between a godfather and godson which was described by the parties as family affair and which we foolishly thought had been amicably settled by the duo of father and son.
We are startled to wake up this morning to learn that twenty-seven out of the thirty-four members of the House of Assembly had moved on by way of defection from PDP to APC in a manner that depicts the voice of Jacob and hand of Esau situation.
We are not aversed to their movement, but we are aversed to the manner of their defection which runs against the provision of our Constitution and decided cases on the conditions a member of the House of Assembly or National Assembly.
For defection to inure to a state assembly member,
Section 68.(1).(g) of the 1999 Constitution must kick in. It permits defection on grounds of division or faction in the party and has been given the legal imprimatur by the Supreme Court in Hon. Ifedayo Abegunde vs Ondo State House of Assembly & 11 Others, where the Appellant was sacked by the Court for defecting to ACN from the party that produced him as House of Assembly member, (Labour Party).
We reckon that in the present case of the twenty-seven members of Rivers State House of Assembly who have defected without any case of division or faction in PDP amounts to violation of the 1999 Constitution as Amended, and the full wrath of such breach of the Constitution must be visited upon them following Abegunde’s case. All the seats of the those that have defected from the Party that elected them should be declared vacant immediately and a new election set in motion by INEC
We know and have it on good authority that their defection is a prelude to something untoward against the governor, a grand and sinister plan to forcefully impeach the governor without recourse to the Constitution because he has refused to abandon PDP, the platform on which he came to power to join APC.
We hereby encourage the governor to remain steadfast in his decision to stick with his party PDP as his defection will diminish the multi-party democracy which offers different and differing opinions, which its abandonment brings us a few step closer to the enthronement of one party State which is tantamount dictatorship of the minority.
We also wish to encourage the Chief Judge of Rivers State not to be cowed into partaking in illegality of forcefully impeaching the governor which will further tarnish the image of the judiciary which has become the fall guy and synonymous with everything baleful since the 2023 general elections.
And to the Rivers State, we urge them to rally round the governor to protect the mandate freely given to him by Rivers State people and ward off any external influence/s from plunging the state into chaos and anarchy which may ultimately envelop our dear nation.
Peter Ameh
National Secretary