Rivers Crisis Takes New Twist As Elders Drag Tinubu, Fubara, INEC, Others To Court Over ‘Illegal’ Peace Agreement

Those who described the Rivers Peace Accord, brokered by President Bola Tinubu, as securing only a graveyard harmony, has been proven right as six elders have dragged the president to the Federal High Court in Abuja for allegedly compelling Governor Siminilaya Fubara to enter into an agreement that is obnoxious to the constitution.

This comes on the heels on a behemothic pro-Governor Sim Fubara protest that grounded commercial activities in Port Harcourt on Friday.

The plaintiffs, led by a member of the Rivers State House of Assembly representing Bonny State Constituency, Victor Jumbo, are Senator Bennett Birabi, Senator Andrew Uchendu, Rear Admiral O. P. Fingesi, Ann Kio Briggs and Emmanuel Deinma.

In the suit, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1718/2023, they argued that the said agreement, which was signed on December 18, was not only illegal but amounted to an usurpation, nullification, and undermining of the extant/binding relevant provisions of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

They therefore prayed the court to, among other things, determine whether President Tinubu, Governor Fubara, and the Rivers State Assembly have the rights and are entitled to enter into any agreement that has the effect of nullifying or undermining the constitutional/legal potency of the provisions of Section 109(I)(g) and (2) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

They averred that neither Tinubu nor Governor Fubara has the statutory powers to stop the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, from conducting fresh elections to replace the 27 Rivers State pro-Wike lawmakers, who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC.

There seats were subsequently, in a legislative act, declared vacant by the court-backed Edison Ehie.

The speaker also communicated same to INEC, asking the electoral body to conduct a fresh election to replace the affected lawmakers.

Tinubu was cited as the first defendant in the case. Others are the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Governor Fubara, the Rivers Assembly, Speaker of the Rivers State Assembly, and the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.