Lawmakers at the Rivers State House of Assembly have defended their decision to block Governor Siminalayi Fubara from presenting the 2024 budget, stating that he failed to follow due process.
According to the Assembly, the governor was invited to submit the budget on March 3 following the Supreme Court judgment, but he did not officially communicate his intention before arriving at the Assembly complex.
The lawmakers argued that proper legislative procedures require the governor to wait for an official invitation before making his presentation.
The Assembly also claimed that previous attempts to communicate with the governor had been ignored, forcing them to use a courier service to deliver their resolutions.
They maintained that their primary concern was the progress of the state and that they were ready to consider the budget once the proper steps were followed.
The lawmakers dismissed allegations that they deliberately blocked Fubara, insisting that his actions were politically motivated.
They accused him of staging the incident to gain public sympathy and paint the Assembly in a bad light.
However, they declared that the legislative process must be respected before any budget presentation can take place.
Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Dr. Enemi Alabo George said:
“We were the ones who immediately after that judgment appealed to the governor to bring his appropriation bill.
“We acted immediately because we have the interest of the state at heart and didn’t want Rivers people to suffer any harm.
“Despite withholding our entitlements for over a year and demolishing our chambers, we still wanted him to hasten up the presentation in the interest of the progress of Rivers.
“We indicated our intentions in that letter and even gave him a timeframe because of the urgency of the matter.
“To regularise his appointments, we also urged him during our subsequent sitting to submit the names of his nominees for the positions of commissioners and some board members for screening and confirmation. But the governor rebuffed our pleas.
“We sent employees of the Assembly to deliver these resolutions to him, but as usual they turned them down at the gate and even brutalised them. We resorted to engaging the services of a courier company.
“But he still did not heed our call forgetting that there are essential services like hospitals, schools and others to be funded.
“Our intention was to finish everything about the budget on March 15 so that we could send necessary information and documents to relevant agencies of the government to allow the release of Rivers allocations at the end of March. But with what he is doing, we don’t know what he wants to achieve.
“How can he turn around to claim that we blocked him from representing his budget? This is the height of insincerity.
“We even need the budget to be passed because the governor has been owing us our entitlements for more than a year and without the budget we can’t get our entitlements.
“The governor and his team simply and deliberately acted Wednesday’s drama with a singular motive to tarnish the image of the Assembly.
“The governor is simply playing to the gallery to whip up unnecessary sentiments. But it has backfired because the truth has come out.”
“But even the letter trending on social media was dated March 11. Does it mean that the governor purportedly sent a letter on Tuesday, God knows when, and immediately mobilised to the Assembly quarters on Wednesday morning claiming he came to present his budget?
“That alone vitiates the claimed purpose. It is procedurally trite that after writing to the Assembly, the governor ought to wait for the letter to be acknowledged by the lawmakers, who will then invite him to appear before them and make his presentation. Governor Fubara ought to know this if he is sincere.”
The legislators should have allowed the Governor into the house in the interest of the Rivers State if their intentions were genuine as claimed. There is no sacrifice too great than the interest of the state. Claiming right at this stage is trite and their insistence on their supposed right will not deliver public good for the hapless people of Rivers state who are at the receiving end of the selfish politicking of the political gladiators.