A Rivers State High Court has affirmed that Martin Amaewhule and 26 other lawmakers of the Rivers State House of Assembly remain members of the Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (PDP). This decision follows a contentious legal battle over their alleged defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC).<\/p>\n
The court, in its ruling on Monday, dismissed a suit brought by Wosa Amadi and three others, which sought to declare the seats of the 27 lawmakers vacant on the grounds of their purported defection to the APC in December 2003.<\/p>\n
Justice Okogbule Gbasam, presiding over the case, concluded that the claimants did not sufficiently demonstrate that the lawmakers had indeed defected to the APC. The judge emphasized that mere newspaper publications, radio announcements, or online reports are insufficient to substantiate claims of defection.<\/p>\n
Justice Gbasam clarified that for a defection to be legally recognized, it must be evidenced through the party’s membership register, an official membership card, and the fulfillment of all requisite membership obligations within the new party. The ruling underscores the importance of tangible, verifiable documentation in establishing party affiliation changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Rivers State High Court has affirmed that Martin Amaewhule and 26 other lawmakers of the Rivers State House of Assembly remain members of the Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (PDP). This decision follows a contentious legal battle over their alleged defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC). The court, in its ruling on Monday, dismissed a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":34307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34306","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\/34306","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\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34306"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34314,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34306\/revisions\/34314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}