The political crisis in Rivers rages on while governance continues to suffer in the oil-rich state.
Nine months after the 27 pro-Wike lawmakers defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the leader of the faction, Martin Amaewhule, has said that they did not leave the PDP.
Mr Amaewhule is the speaker of the 27-member faction.
"A lot has been said about the issue of defection - 27 of us in the (Rivers) State House of Assembly never defected to any other party.
"We were elected under the platform of the PDP, and we never defected. We never took any steps to defect to any other party. What you see every time are mere plans by the Governor of Rivers State," Mr Amaewhule said in a video posted on X on Saturday.
Mr Amaewhule, who led a team of 26 other lawmakers loyal to the Minister of FCT, Nyesom Wike, stated this after a Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed the suit filed by Action Peoples Party (APP) seeking the replacement of the 27 lawmakers after their seats were declared vacant.
Defection
On 11 December 2023, the pro-Wike lawmakers defected from the PDP to the APC because of the political rifts between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor, Mr Wike.
Mr Wike helped Mr Fubara, who was Rivers' accountant general, to become the governor against all the odds. However, the duo fell out about four months after Mr Fubara was sworn in.
"On your mandate, we shall stand," the pro-Wike lawmakers were seen in a video of their defection chanting President Bola Tinubu's campaign song and waving the APC flag on the day they defected.
The lawmakers had cited divisions in the PDP as the reason for their defection.
Edison Ehie, a lawmaker loyal to Governor Fubara, subsequently declared the seats of the 27 lawmakers vacant after getting a court order which enabled him to take over the Rivers legislature.
Mr Ehie led a four-man Rivers assembly but later resigned after President Tinubu brokered a controversial peace deal between Messrs Wike and Fubara.
The deal had since collapsed.
Events, intrigues after collapse of peace deal
While the peace deal subsisted, the pro-Wike lawmakers had at least four times passed a bill into law by overriding Mr Fubara's veto on them, including stripping the governor of the power to appoint a caretaker committee for the local government areas in the state.
Frustrated by the actions of the pro-Wike lawmakers, Mr Fubara declared that Rivers has no House of Assembly. He emphasised that the seats of Mr Amawhule-led members had been declared vacant.
A barrage of litigations followed Mr Fubara's declaration. Many from Rivers urged the court to declare the seats of the defected lawmakers vacant.
The Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday dismissed a suit filed by the APP seeking a replacement for the pro-Wike lawmakers over their defection.
The judge, Peter Lifu, said the suit was status-barred because it had not been initiated within the 14 days allowed by the law.
The APP filed the suit on 12 July, about eight months after the lawmakers' defection.
The judge cited a previous judgment by Justice James Omotosho, who rejected the suit because of insufficient evidence to establish that the 27 lawmakers defected from the PDP to the APC.
Speaking at the court in Abuja on Friday, Mr Amaewhule said Governor Fubara sponsored the suit against them.
He said that he and his 26 colleagues did not defect to the APC and that Governor Fubara wants to remove them through the "backdoor".
"Everything you've seen is being sponsored by Governor Siminalayi Fubara to remove us from office because he cannot withstand the rule of law. He does not want to govern under the tenets of our democracy.
"He cannot withstand the principle of separation of power. The governor is afraid of democracy, and that is why he's hell-bent on removing all of us. He runs to every court anywhere in this country, looking for how to remove us through the backdoor. What the court had said today, including all they've tendered as evidence, is clear: no such thing as defection.
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"In any case, we have a right to defect, but we never defected. Anything you've seen is just the arrangement being sponsored by the governor. I say it clearly because he's the one pushing all of them.
"He's sponsoring all these persons from one court to the other, but I can tell the only way our democracy can be sustained - the only way the dividends of democracy can get to our people is when you have the rule of law in place," he said.
The Commissioner for Information in Rivers State, Joseph Johnson, did not respond to calls and texts seeking comments on the allegations that Governor Fubara sponsored the court case against the pro-Wike lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the APC in Rivers has vowed to sanction the 27 lawmakers over their claim that they were still members of the PDP.
"Right now, we are focused on local government elections, and after that, we will take necessary actions concerning them," the APC chairperson in Rivers, Emeka Beke, said of the lawmakers, according to a report by Punch newspaper.
