Former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has lambasted President Bola Tinubu for suspending Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara and other elected officials in the South-South state.
In a statement posted on his X account Wednesday, El-Rufai characterized the decision as “wanton aggression against democratic tenets and the rule of law.”
While acknowledging the security challenges in Rivers that require urgent attention, El-Rufai argued that declaring a state of emergency should not lead to dismantling democratic structures.
“There are things that are so clearly wrong that the justifications summoned in their defense fall flat,” El-Rufai stated. “The decision of Mr. President to suspend the elected officials of the Rivers State Government is one of those.”
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The former FCT Minister emphasized that Nigeria’s Constitution does not grant the president power to suspend elected state officials.
He cited the Supreme Court ruling in Dariye vs. Attorney General of the Federation, which declared such actions unlawful.
“Our country’s Constitution does not support it precisely because it is dangerous to our system of democratic federalism for an elected president to assume and exercise powers to suspend elected officials at the State level,” he explained.
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El-Rufai pointed out the irony that as an opposition figure, Tinubu had opposed President Goodluck Jonathan’s declaration of a state of emergency in the North-East, even though that action did not include suspending elected officials.
He urged President Tinubu to reconsider his decision and return to “the path of constitutionalism and the rule of law,” while calling on “all patriots and voices of reason” to speak out against what he described as a “gross violation of the Constitution.”
“Let us not keep silent while the slippery slope of replicating the events of emergency rule in the old Western Region in 1962 unfolds before our very eyes,” El-Rufai warned.