Abuja Leaders of the Eastern Zone Ijaw Youth Council have brought the Federal Government before the ECOWAS Court of Justice over what they claim is an unlawful suspension by President Bola Tinubu of Rivers State Governor Siminalaye Fubara and other elected officials.
President Tinubu’s proclamation of a State of Emergency in Rivers State was similarly contested by the 12 litigants, who were led by Comrade Ibiso Harry.
In order to establish a fully functional democratic order, the applicants in the case designated ECW/CCJ/APP/18/25 specifically asked the regional court to issue an order rescinding the suspension of elected officials and the removal of democratic institutions and structures in Rivers State.
Additionally, they asked the court to issue an order nullifying all judgments, actions, policies, and directives made by the Sole Administrator, who was appointed by President Tinubu on March 18 to oversee Rivers State’s activities for a period of six months.
Articles III and IV of the supplemental protocol revising the ECOWAS Court’s protocol, Article II of the court’s protocol, and Article 33 of the court’s rules served as the foundation for the applicants’ lawsuit.
They contended that Tinubu, the president of the Respondent, who was elected to office, lacked the authority to dismiss or suspend a state’s elected governor.
The dismissal of Governor Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, according to the Ijaw youth leaders, was a flagrant violation of their basic human rights.
“In doing so, the Defendant has illegally deprived the Applicants and the people of Rivers State of their democratic rights, both individually and collectively,” they continued.
In addition to drowning, dispersing, and collapsing their constitutional rights and the state’s citizens’ rights under neo-junta governance, the applicants claim that President Tinubu’s actions have forced them into an arbitrary, undemocratic, and unconstitutional system of government that they are unable to comply with.
“The implication therefore is that the applicants and the people of Rivers State have lost their existence and dignity as human beings, having been politically emasculated by the loss of the values that accompany democratic governance and deprived of leaders duly elected by them in the democratic space.”
They maintained that President Tinubu’s actions was antithetical to tenets of democracy, adding that the president exhibited “absoluteness in determining the existence and functioning of democratic systems in national sub-units by upturning and collapsing entrenched democratic systems.”
“The deliberate disruption of the democratic order in any part of the national structure questions the democratic practice and constitutional authenticity of the nation state, as the forceful removal of popular sovereignty in a part or fraction of the national landscape translates to the non-existence of liberal democracy and non-application and conformity with constitutional norms in the entire federation.
“The enthronement of an illegal and unconstitutional order in any form within a constitutional democracy threatens the very idea of freedom and precipitates loss of genuineness on the part of the state and its institutions of any legitimate claim to a constitutional democracy.
“A state of emergency cannot be guise or subterfuge for the usurpation of the executive functions of the Governor or the exercise of the law making powers of the legislature,” the applicants averred in an affidavit they filed in support of the legal action they lodged through a team of lawyers led by Chief Festus Ogwuche.
Meanwhile, no date has been fixed for the matter to be heard.
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