The Rivers State All Progressives Congress (APC) has indicted Governor Siminalayi Fubara with a plot to get a court ruling declaring the current Rivers State House of Assembly to be unlawful.
Chief Tony Okocha, the state’s APC caretaker committee chairman, made the accusation while speaking with reporters in Port Harcourt on Thursday. He said that the planned court order also intended to void all of the laws that the governor’s vetoed by the House led by the Rt. Hon. Martins Amaewhule.
According to Okocha, Fubara planned to use the temporary order as leverage to name caretaker committees for each of the state’s twenty-three local government districts.
He said: “I want to use this opportunity to inform Rivers people and Nigerians of the move by the governor of Rivers State, Siminalayi Fubara, to procure interim orders from judges that I will not name here, but I will put in my petition to the NJC.
“What is the intention? He wants to procure interim order stopping the implementation of the laws he was vetoed over. He wants to procure an order to announce as illegal, the Rivers State House of Assembly, as constituted and led by Rt. Hon. Martins Chike Amaewhule.
“The governor is in the business as we speak and I speak with all authority because the walls have ears. We live in their kitchen, we live in the parlour, their sitting room. We live in their bedrooms. These are the plans that are on. You may get this plot confirmed before Monday next week.
“He is doing that so that he will now leverage on the interim order to go ahead to appoint caretaker committees for local government councils against the warning of the man he says he respects, the President.”
As the main opposition in the state, the APC, according to its caretaker chairman, will take all legal measures to prevent the conspiracy from succeeding.
Okocha said: “But, let’s put it clearly here that we will stoutly, vehemently oppose such negative subterranean moves by a man who ought to protect the dignity and integrity of a state called Rivers State.
“I have said that Rivers State cannot be turned to a pariah state because of the actions of one person. Rivers State is a state to be reckoned with in the comity of states, duly respected and regarded.”
However, Warisenibo Joe Johnson, the state’s commissioner of information and communications, denied any truth to the APC’s accusations when he was approached.
Johnson claimed that the state’s citizens’ natural affection for the governor was the only reason the APC was in a panic.
He said: “Baseless! They are panicked because they know their fall is near. Rivers people spoke yesterday (Wednesday) through the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) and that organic love expressed, threw the camp of the factional acting Party chairman of APC into this feverish situation.”