The Federal High Court in Abuja has issued a ruling barring the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from conducting by-elections to fill 27 vacant seats in the Rivers State House of Assembly. Justice Donatus Okorowo, in his decision on Friday, granted an interim injunction following a dispute over the declaration of the seats as vacant.<\/p>\n
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The conflict revolves around a power struggle between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and former governor Nyesom Wike, who is currently the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), for control of the state’s political structure.<\/p>\n
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The 27 lawmakers, aligned with former governor Nyesom Wike and led by Martin Amaewhule, had their seats declared vacant by a rival faction headed by Edison Ehie, a former speaker supported by Governor Siminalayi Fubara.<\/p>\n
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Ehie obtained an ex-parte order from the Rivers State High Court in Port Harcourt, granting him and three colleagues the authority to conduct legislative business without interference from the Amaewhule-led faction.<\/p>\n
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In the recent ruling, Justice Okorowo granted an interim injunction restraining INEC from conducting by-elections until the hearing and determination of a motion on notice filed by Amaewhule and his group.<\/p>\n
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“An interim injunction is hereby granted restraining the 1st defendant (INEC) from conducting fresh elections to fill the seats of the plaintiffs (the 27 lawmakers) in the Rivers State House of Assembly, pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice.”<\/p>\n
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The judge also prohibited interference with the legislative duties of the 27 members, including their roles as speakers, deputy speaker, and members of parliament. Additionally, the Inspector-General of Police and the State Security Service (SSS) were barred “from denying or refusing to provide security to the plaintiffs or withdrawing their security details.”<\/p>\n
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The Federal High Court in Abuja has issued a ruling barring the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from conducting by-elections to fill 27 vacant seats in the Rivers State House of Assembly. Justice Donatus Okorowo, in his decision on Friday, granted an interim injunction following a dispute over the declaration of the seats as vacant. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":11840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11839"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11841,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11839\/revisions\/11841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}