RIVERS LAWMAKERS GO UNDERGROUND

Most of the 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly have gone underground, a deliberate strategy said to have been taken to avoid being approached by the group loyal to the Minister of State for Education, Nyesom Wike, to work against Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi.

Although the pro-Amaechi group strenuously denied reports, last week, that the eight other members of the House of Assembly had defected to the pro-Wike-Obuah group, fuelling speculations that an impeachment plot against Governor Amaechi was imminent, the governor’s camp is said to be deeply agitated by the report.

Sources close to the House of Assembly told Daily Newswatch that the pro-Amaechi lawmakers have gone underground to evade overtures from the pro-Wike-Obuah group, essentially after the suspension of Amaechi from the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, last week.

Governor Amaechi was said to have travelled to Abuja on Tuesday, with some 10 lawmakers, while those who didn’t make the trip have remained pointedly invisible. Since the crisis blew into the open with the suspension of the chairman, Timothy Nsirim, vice chairman, Solomon Eke and all 17 councillors, on Monday, April 22, most of the 27 legislators loyal to Governor Amaechi have been very evasive. Their phones are most of the time switched off. And for those who are lucky to get across to them, their calls have not been picked.

The Chief Press Secretary to Governor Amaechi, David Iyifor, told Daily Newswatch that most of the lawmakers are in town attending to their legislative duties.

Specifically, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Otelemaba Dan-Amachree, has clearly not been seen in public since the Commissioner of Police, Mbu Joseph Mbu, invited him to the police command to provide the police with evidence to substantiate allegations made by him that subterranean meetings were being held in a neighbouring eastern state as well as in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, on plans to eliminate Governor Amaechi and himself.

News on the Speaker’s whereabouts has become very hazy since Justice Adolphous Enebili of a Port Harcourt High Court, on Tuesday, refused to grant an order sought by the Speaker, Dan-Amachree, asking the court to restrain the Assistant Inspector General of Police, N. S. Ugwu, and the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, from arresting him over allegations he made that there were plans to assassinate him and Governor Amaechi.

In the last six weeks, the Speaker and the Leader of the House, Chidi Lloyd, have devised a conduit, in concert with the press unit at government house, of sending press statements to the e-mailboxes of journalists without attempting to answer enquiries on the allegations they have raised, no matter how weighty.

Governor Amaechi’s recourse to the court for an order restraining members of the House of Assembly from impeaching him, unconstitutionally, gave an indication that moves were either being made to attract more lawmakers to join the anti-Amaechi five lawmakers in the house, or that the house that adjourned sine dine on Tuesday, April 23, was about to resume sitting.

And in Abuja, Daily Newswatch learnt that the state assembly members are holed in Asokoro District of the Federal Capital Terrotory.

Sources told  said the state assembly members have been having series of meetings with pro- Amaechi politicians in Abuja, particularly National Assembly members.

“A top officer of the House of Representatives personally drove himself to see the Rivers State legislators where they are staying and assured them that it is noble to stand by one’s principle. He said they should not be in a hurry to go back as the hawks are all over Port Harcourt looking for them,” Daily Newswatch was told.

Speaker of the house of assembly, Otelemaba Dan Amachree, had raised the alarm last week that anti-Amaechi forces were mounting pressures on him to commence impeachment process on the governor. He, however, said no amount of intimidation or incentive would make him compromise his position on the Amaechi saga.

The governor had on Tuesday approached a Port Harcourt High Court to stop any impeachment proceedings that the Rivers State House of Assembly may contemplate against him.

In the suit filed on his behalf byB.E.I. Nworfor, SAN, the governor is urging the court to restrain the 32 members of the  state House of Assembly from impeaching him unconstitutionally or even initiating an impeachment process against him for whatever reasons all through the remaining part of his second term in office.

Amaechi, therefore, asked the court to restrain the 32 lawmakers from impeaching him before the expiration of his tenure on May 29, 2015, which he claimed, is his constitutional right.

Source: Daily Newswatch