The fate of the N800Bn proposed 2024 budget of Rivers State hangs in the balance as the financial plan seems to become a target of the political crisis in the state.
This is as the State’s House of Assembly complex is now being demolished by bulldozers and pale loaders carting away debris.
The FG and most states have presented their budgets, but Rivers State has been silent. Many suspected it was because of the crisis in the House, where two speakers hold sway.
Soon, the state executive council made the first move by approving N800Bn, but many wondered where this budget would be presented.
The lawmakers loyal to Gov Sim Fubara, including the ‘new speaker’ confirmed by the High Court, while those loyal to Nyesom Wike are 27, including the speaker who has allegedly been removed, Martins Amaewhule.
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When the state government announced the budget proposal, the Wike camp reacted by pulling 27 lawmakers out of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and out of the party to the All Progressives Congress (APC). This was seen as a signal that the state government has no majority required to pass a major bill.
The executive seemed to react by securing a court verdict yesterday, December 12, 2023, endorsing the authenticity of the Ehie speakership, though the group is only four.
This morning, the state government is said to have moved to demolish the House because the Wike camp with police protection has been sitting.
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The camp has also notified the Governor that they have defected, a notification that was interpreted as an impeachment notice.
Fubara seemed to have been alarmed, and this morning, the House came down and is being evacuated. This would mean there are no House of Assembly chambers until the state government finds a temporary venue and announces it.
Many say the Wike camp may not know the location of the new House but that the Ehie group may sit there and receive and pass the budget. The government is said to be demolishing the House because it was set on fire and may no longer be safe for workers. They may want to rebuild it by bringing it down to pave the way for reconstruction.
The budget is said to be targeted because that is where Gov Fubara would draw funds from to survive or to deliver projects and programmes that may win love and support from the ordinary people as he has vowed.
Fubara is seen to have chosen not to engage his godfather in the war of words but to use action (governance) to sell himself to the masses. The budget is critical in this strategy, hence the war over its passage. Should he not get a budget, he would qualify for impeachment should he spend without approval of the House.
The sensitivity of the budget is said to be so acute that the moment the Court ruled that Ehie (Fubara’s loyalist) is the authentic speaker, the APC, now led by Wike’s loyalist, Tony Okocha, threatened to drag the justice, M.W Danagogo, to the National Judicial Council (NJC) over his ruling on the crisis rocking the State House of Assembly.
The Wike group seemed rattled that the Court also issued a fresh order stopping Amaehule and 26 other lawmakers loyal to Nyesom Wike from accessing the House of Assembly Complex.
But reacting to the ruling by the court, the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of APC in Rivers State, Okocha, described the confirmation of Edison Ehie as the authentic Speaker of the state Assembly by Danagogo as an abuse of court processes.
He said Tuesday that the exparte order issued by Danagogo was a clear violation of the law and NJC principles.
The APC Chairman hinted that the ruling and exparte order granted to Edison Ehie was to pave the way for Gov Fubara to present the 2024 Budget to the Assembly as well as the passage of the Appropriation Bill by only four members of the House, which is in the minority.
He stressed that the PDP is jittery following the defection of 27 assembly members elected on the party’s platform to APC.
