A civil society organisation; the International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights, has said that it would embark on a legal battle with the 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly who recently defected to the state’s chapter of the All Progressives Congress.
The organisation added that it was unconstitutional for the lawmakers to have defected to another party from the Peoples Democratic Party, where they emerged to represent the people of the state.
According to the group, it is a breach of people’s trust for them to have defected from their previous party under which they were elected into the state House of Assembly, and that it was criminal for the lawmakers to remain “under the previous mandate with a different manifesto.”
The crisis rocking the state’s House of Assembly forced the 27 lawmakers to defect to the APC, citing the division within the state PDP.
But the affected lawmakers were said to be loyalists of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, who had a frosty relationship with the State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara.
Commenting on the development, the chancellor of the group, Chief Jackson Omenazu, said the failure of the lawmakers to comply with the provisions of the constitution would be translated as unlawful.
He noted that the group would be interested in using protest to demand for justice for the people of the state whose mandate “was about to be brazenly manipulated through crass political brigandage.”
Omenagu urged the APC-led Federal Government not to encourage lawlessness and distance itself from being a “beneficiary of crime and the criminal boldness of some Nigerians.”
He said in a statement made available to Saturday PUNCH that the group would be resolute in sustaining the constitutional authority, noting that the electorate would henceforth demand responsible conduct from the political elite.
The statement read in part, “By constitutional provisions of the 1999 Constitution as amended, the 27 parliamentarians in Rivers State who abandoned their mandate given to them by political parties have seized to be parliamentarians.
“The moral position of the constitution dictates that the people have been fooled at last. Hence there’s a need to seek a fresh mandate to determine their acceptance based on their newfound manifesto.
“This above-the-law mentality should stop forthwith. No citizen is a half citizen and we all have equal rights. The few who are temporarily privileged shouldn’t in any way take others as fools.
“The International Society for Social Justice and Human Rights demands the immediate vacation of the parliamentary seats in the Rivers State House of Assembly by the defected parliamentarians. There should be no middle ground about it; a mandate abandoned is a mandate lost.”
Omenazu cautioned the 27 lawmakers that failure to comply with the provisions of the law would lead to a protracted legal battle between our organisation and the aforementioned lawmakers.
