Leaders of the Ijaw Youth Council, Eastern Zone, have dragged the Federal Government of Nigeria before the ECOWAS Court of Justice, over what they described as illegal suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State and other elected officials, by President Bola Tinubu.
The 12 litigants, led by Comrade Ibiso Harry, equally challenged President Tinubu’s declaration of a State of Emergency in Rivers State.
The Applicants, in the suit marked: ECW/CCJ/APP/18/25, specifically urged the regional court to issue an order, setting aside and/or quashing the suspension of elected officials and removal of the democratic structures and institutions in Rivers state, as an imperative for the enthronement of a full-fledged democratic order.
They further prayed the court for an order, setting aside all decisions, actions, policies and directives given or issued by the Sole Administrator that President Tinubu appointed on March 18 to superintend over the affairs of Rivers state for six months.
The Ijaw youth leaders anchored their suit on Articles III and IV of the supplementary protocol amending ECOWAS Court’s protocol; Article II of the Protocol of the court and Article 33 of the Rules of the court.
They averred that the Respondent’s President (Tinubu), who was elected into political office, lacked the powers to remove or suspend the governor of a state, who was also elected into the office.
The Applicants further argued that the removal of governor Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu and members of the Rivers State House of Assembly, was in gross violation of their fundamental human rights.
“By so doing, the Defendant has unlawfully taken away the democratic rights of the Applicants and that of the population of Rivers State both individually and collectively,” they added.
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According to the Applicants, President Tinubu’s actions have not only drowned, diffused and collapsed their constitutional rights and that of the people of the state in neo-junta governance but also put them into an unconstitutional, undemocratic and arbitrary manner of governance which they cannot fit into.
“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 were 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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