Under the banner of Lawyers in Defence of Democracy, a group of human rights attorneys marched through the streets of Abuja on Wednesday, calling for the return of democratic governance to Rivers State.
The attorneys are urging the international community and the United States to put pressure on President Bola Tinubu to reverse his decision to suspend the Rivers State House of Assembly and Governor Siminalayi Fubara.
After proclaiming a state of emergency in the state, Tinubu suspended Fubara, his deputy, and the Rivers Assembly for a period of six months.
The attorneys, led by Barr. Uche Chukwu Udeh Sylvester, their Country Director, told reporters during a protest march to the US embassy in Abuja on Wednesday that the state of emergency in Rivers State is unconstitutional and threatens democracy.
They further claimed that due process was not followed and that there was no obvious and immediate threat to support the emergency rule.
They asked the US government to step in and put pressure on Tinubu to reinstate democratic governance in Rivers State in a letter to President Donald Trump.
The lawyers claim that Governor Fubara’s and the State Assembly’s suspensions are blatant attempts to subvert constitutional order.
Additionally, the attorneys denounced the National Assembly’s ratification of the emergency rule, calling it an attack on democracy.
They urged Tinubu to change his mind and let Fubara stay in office as Rivers State’s lawfully elected governor.
The letter to Trump said, in part: “We have found ourselves at a crossroads, a sober moment of reckoning where constitutional order is being tested most brazenly in an era where democracy is supposed to reign supreme giving democracy dividends to the masses.”
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“Under the pretext of Emergency Rule, the President, who pledged to enforce the Constitution, has taken a most unprecedented and illegal act by suspending a democratically elected governor, deputy governor, and whole state House of Assembly. What’s the emergency? No such emergency was perceived or felt by Rivers people or Nigerians.
“No constitutional clause, law, or established convention grants the president the authority to unilaterally disband the institutions of an elected state government, and we stand by this.
We are not firmly under the control of a military dictatorship, yet this could only have occurred during the era of military juntas. With a presidential system of government, the nation is currently ruled by a constitutional democracy.
Since democracy is a learning process and the judiciary has proven to be capable of resolving disputes, President Bola Tinubu shouldn’t have made the choice.
“The president ought to have let the other branches of government handle the problems. It is not commendable that Osun State’s local government administration issue up until recently did not result in a state of emergency proclamation.
