The G-60 members of the House of Representatives have declared that the 27 pro-Wike Rivers State legislators presently based in Abuja and operating from a two room self-contain in Emohua and Abuja, are still able to move freely and parade themselves as lawmakers on account of Governor Siminalayi Fubara’s mercy in obedience to the peace accord orchestrated by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
This is as the G-60 Federal lawmakers also noted that the 27 legislators of the Rivers State House of Assembly lack the legitimacy to amend the State Public Procurement law as well as override the assent of Governor Fubara to pass the 2024 Rivers State Public Procurement (Amendment) Bill.
The Federal lawmakers stressed that the purported veto powers of 27 persons parading themselves as Rivers lawmakers was nothing but legislative madness taken too far by some clowns.
These were contained in a statement by the spokesperson of the Group, Hon. Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, in which they described the veto as legislative rascality.
The statement further said; “While the Governor has kept to letters of the accord, his predecessor and Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Minister, Chief Nyesom Wike has not with what his loyalists are doing.
“One of such evidence is the purported veto of Rivers procurement law which is an unenforceable legislative madness by impostors who are scared of impact of Fubara’s infrastructure revolution. If not, how can people worth calling lawmakers even think that mobilisation fee of not more than 20 per cent of any contract sum is enough for suppliers or contractors to move to site or provide goods and services in the present economic quagmire masterminded by their allies in the federal government?
“It is also on notice that these persons who seat in some hotel rooms in Abuja or anywhere their paymasters take them to make such pronouncements, have lost the status of lawmakers ever since they dumped the party, the PDP which was a vehicle that brought them to power and joined APC.
“The action violated Section 109 (1) (g) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) which states that; Section 109 (1) of the 1999 Constitution provides that ‘a member of a House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if … (g) being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political Party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected.
“To this end, these person are not lawmakers and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should rise to the occasion and conduct election to fill those vacant seats and save Rivers from this continuous illegality and Nigeria the embarrassment that non-existing lawmakers are causing too often,” the statement said.
