Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State has removed Eze Sergeant Awuse as the Chairman of the State Supreme Council of Traditional Rulers.
The governor made this announcement on Friday during a special meeting with the traditional rulers at the Banquet Hall of the Government House in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
Fubara, thereafter, appointed Eze Chike Wodo as the new chairman of the council, saying that the office could not remain vacant.
Speaking at the meeting, the governor said Awuse had not been leading the council effectively for a while due to his alleged role in the ongoing crisis in the state.
Fubara described Awuse as an unstable character, noting that he had been playing double standards since the political crisis in the state.
Fubara said, “It is like your chairman has run away. Maybe when your chairman is ready, he will write to me. If he gets the approval, he can then come for the meeting.
“But you already know his position. He is not a stable man, he is not a stable character. He cannot say something in the morning and say another thing in the evening.
“It is because of that he decided to hide his head. You have to bear with him until when God will help us remove this problem you are having. By the grace of God, it will be resolved soon.”
Recall that the former governor of the state, Nyesom Wike, had replaced the then Chairman of the Council, King Dandeson Douglas Jaja, with Awuse.
However, in the wake of the political crisis, the State House of Assembly, led by Martin Amaewhule, promulgated a law that barred Fubara from interfering with the leadership of the traditional council.
Meanwhile, as the crisis plaguing the state extends to the local government level, a member of the state elders’ council, Chief Asukewe Iko-Awaji, and some lawyers in the country have criticised the role so far played by the judiciary in the lingering battle.
Speaking, Iko-Awaji and the lawyers said it was embarrassing that judges of both the state and the federal High Courts could contradict one another in their judgments over the position of the pro-Wike lawmakers who had defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP to the All Progressives Congress, APC.
In his submission, Iko-Awaji said the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, and the National Judicial Commission, NJC, should put in place disciplinary measures to sanction judges dishing out conflicting orders to create chaos in the country.
“How can a Federal High Court judge give an order and a state High Court judge, who is on the same level with him then give a counter judgment? I have said it that the NJC should stand tall and recall those judges. The Chief Judge of the Federation should also look into the issues of these judges who don’t have the interest of the people at heart. They don’t even have the interest of the law, which they took an oath to protect. They should be punished.
“The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, too should look at their members. Everything is not money. If you are given a case and you know that the case can bring great chaos, you can advise whosoever that gave you the case to make peace instead of going to court to create more problems. Rivers State is not the first state. The issue of state lawmakers defecting to another party happened in Cross Rivers State and the court said they are no longer members of the party. Yet, nobody killed anybody. It happened in Ebonyi State. So why must it be a problem in the case of Rivers State. And the law has been very clear that it is the party that contested election and not individual,” he told Saturday PUNCH.
Also reacting, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Wahab Shittu, said apart from conflicting court orders causing the crisis in Rivers State, the pervasive influence of ‘godfatherism’ in Nigeria’s democratic system had deprived citizens their rights to decide who to govern them.
He said, “Conflicting court orders is part of the problem but the more fundamental challenge is the pervasive influence of godfatherism in our democratic experiment.
“It is obvious that if the Rivers State people were allowed to choose who will be their governor without this mechanism of anointing, then the scenario would have been different. It would have been a bigger lesson for oppressors of our democratic experiment to allow the people to decide who will govern them in a free and fair poll without deploying some godfatherism influence in the process.”
In a similar vein, a lawyer and Executive Director, Centre for Social Justice, Eze Onyekpere, said the judiciary had forsaken the principles of justice and now promoting partisan interests for the highest bidder.
He stated, “The judiciary is dancing naked in the market square. It has desecrated the idea of justice as it now looks like justice wears partisan colours and it is for the highest bidder.
“The current concept of judicial justice that grossly deviates from the views of the overwhelming majority of Nigerians will in the long run lead to anarchy.”
