President Bola Tinubu is currently holding a meeting with the Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, the former governor of Rivers State, Sir Peter Odili, Minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike and some other stakeholders from the state at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
This is coming on the heels of the face-off between the governor and his predecessor, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike.
Although the agenda of the meeting between the President and the protagonists in the Rivers State crisis was not made public at the time of filing this report, it may not be unconnected to the recent developments in the state in which 27 out of 32 members of the State House of Assembly, who are loyalists of the FCT Minister, defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Also at the meeting is the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, and the Rivers State deputy governor.
It would be recalled that the G27 faction of the Rivers State House of Assembly, led by Mr. Martins Amaewhule, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the state government, yesterday, disagreed over the vacancy of seats in the House.
While Amaewhule said their seats are not vacant, because their defection from the PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC, was constitutional and due to the crisis rocking the PDP in the state, the Rivers State government and the PDP disagreed.
This happened on a day when an alleged draft of an Abuja court order backing the G-27 and the commencement of the impeachment process against Governor Siminalayi Fubara surfaced.
Amaewhule stated that the 4-man faction of the Assembly led by Edison Ehie could not for quorum and whatever they were doing in the name of the Assembly was null and void.
Speaking during a dedication service and stakeholders’ meeting of the APC in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, Amaewhule said: “We begged Mr President, the former president could not attend to the problems of the State, so we begged Mr President (Tinubu) that we have a problem. Look at the East-West Road; the Ogoni road unlike the previous president, the president gave us his words and said go back home irrespective of your party, I am a detribalized Nigerian. That’s what the president told us.
“We defected in line with the provision of the 1999 constitution, section 109. We didn’t do anything contrary to the Constitution. We have evidence that there is crisis in the PDP. We have every right under the constitution to defect.
“We hear that some four persons gathered and are meeting somewhere we don’t know. Whatever they are doing, Rivers people should know it today the House of Assembly of any state is defined by the Constitution. The only way you can reconvene the House, you need to have quorum and quorum is 11. If you are not upto 11, anything you are doing is a family meeting.
Anything they told you they have done, ignore them. It’s null and void. The law is clear anything you are doing, you must do it in line with the dictates of the constitution and the standing orders of the Rivers House of Assembly. We are 27 in all. They are just four. So whenever we meet it is Rivers State House of Assembly that is meeting.”
