RSHA decampees: Who has bewitched you?

In its over 10 years of running, this Penpoint column has hardly treated any subject in more than two editions of its host title—Daily Trust on Sunday.  However, in deference to public interest in and concern over the lingering as well as deepening political feud in Rivers State, a third visit to the issue becomes justified.

This is especially so as the scenario under consideration has kept degenerating daily from a proxy war launched on the floor of the Rivers State House of Assembly (RSHA), against the sitting governor Siminalayi Fubara by his immediate predecessor in office Nyesom Wike, to a wide open parting of ways between two arms of government in that state. And by last count, a decampment occurred as 27 out of the 32 members of the assembly under the leadership of Martins Amewhule the former Speaker, and with loyalty to Wike, left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) en masse, to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Matters did not end there as on Wednesday last week, the entire edifice of the RSHA was demolished by the state government, as it cited the compromised structural integrity of the building, after the October 30 2023 explosion, which damaged substantial sections of it, as the reason for the exercise. Hence, the political feud which started as a failed attempt at impeaching Fubara by the Wike loyalists in the RSHA, and which has manifested several turns and twists, eventually took a turn for the worse, courtesy of two resolutions by the same group, which will define the course of politics in the state henceforth.

In the first place was the resolution by the same Amewhule group to jettison their party PDP and align with the APC, citing internal crisis in their former. However their calculation was faulty as there was no national crisis in the PDP, with evidence of a split, which would have justified their defection.  In the second place was the resolution by the same decamping legislators not to approve any request from the governor Fubara until their ‘demands’ are met; which by their own admission has as the principal element, the non-remittance of their November 2023 funding. Given that presentation of the budget of the Rivers State Government for 2024 was running out of time, their resolution was largely seen as an unjustified act of vendetta to frustrate the governor.

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Beyond the fact that this new twist constituted the high point in the contest for supremacy between the warring camps, its execution and utility have proved to be most unhelpful, and smacks of poor thinking-through by the legislators. Had they been more discretional, they would have been led otherwise. For among other considerations, the situation has trumped all former developments as it has now moved the crisis to a definitive stage where governance and general welfare of the entire Rivers State, now remain impacted. The immediate implications include the stalling of good governance as well as likely threat to peace, law and order in the state. And this is hardly what and why the legislators were elected for in the first place.

Seen in context, the faulty reasoning behind the questionable resolutions by the dissenting, Amewhule-led legislators remains self-manifest as they, like persons under a spell, had misread the rules of the game they indulged in. For instance, it was out of place for these dissenting RSHA legislators to contemplate antagonising the governor over delay in remittance of November 2023 funding of the institution. After all, as a statutory arm of government, the RSHA enjoys the liberty and powers to deploy fiscal ways and means – including obtaining bank loans to run is operations in the interim, while sorting out any reported delay in remittances.

Secondly, for the 27 legislators to resolve to embargo any request by the governor until their demands were met, constituted a manifest assault on the Constitution and due process, hijack of governance and abdication of their constitutional responsibility as elected members of a legislature with powers and responsibilities assigned by the Constitution. Against the backdrop of the wide powers granted the legislature whereby the only change it cannot execute in a polity, is to change a man to a woman and vice versa, the Constitution envisages that the institution shall serve as the primary change agent in governance, being the eye and voice of the people in governance. It is also for such dispensation that it is given the power of the purse, and the sole prerogative to remove a president or governor from office, under specified terms and conditions.

From the position of a balanced perspective on the running political crisis, the truth remains that RSHA under Martins Amewhule, had since its inauguration in June 2023 been unable to set up the mandatory legislative agenda, being a schedule of areas and issues designated for legislative intervention that would provide guidance and credible interfacing with the executive arm, and other organs of government. Had they set up a viable legislative agenda, they would have been engaged in a more sustainable enterprise, and not indulge in the misadventure of launching a failed unjustified impeachment bid, in a proxy war that served any other interest but theirs. For this misadventure they need to be reflecting on the question of who bewitched them to act in denial of self-evident truths?

In the circumstances, rather noteworthy is also the congruence between the proclivities of the RSHA decampees and the antics of the former governor Nyesom Wike, who has not spared any opportunity to excoriate in veiled and clear terms, his successor Siminalayi Fubara, out of a questionable sense of entitlement to docile servitude from the latter. With the present state of affairs, Fubara may have saved himself some relief from the incubus which Wike had constituted over him.

Going forward from now, it needs to be appreciated by all and sundry that the earliest return to normalcy, remains the best option for all parties in the feud. This calls for the governor Siminalayi Fubara as the chief executive of the Rivers State to work assiduously towards executing his constitutional mandate of restoring and sustaining the definitive processes of democratic rule,. This obligation dictates the earliest provision of a legislative facility where the RSHA can conduct its legitimate business of representing the people and in full public glare. The functions of the legislature are threefold namely law-making, constituency representation and oversight of government business. These functions should be provided for to keep the legislature truly functional in the new dispensation.

The obligation goes beyond bothering about the renegade 27 legislators who should now be ruminating over who bewitched them into their recent indulgences in wasteful political shenanigans.