{"id":80380,"date":"2025-12-16T22:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T22:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=80380"},"modified":"2025-12-16T22:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T22:50:11","slug":"emergency-powers-ruling-threatens-democracy-adc-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/12\/16\/emergency-powers-ruling-threatens-democracy-adc-warns\/","title":{"rendered":"Emergency Powers Ruling Threatens Democracy, ADC Warns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The African Democratic Congress (ADC), has criticised the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling affirming the President\u2019s power to suspend elected governors and state assemblies during a state of emergency, warning that it poses a serious threat to Nigeria\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Tuesday, the party\u2019s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said the judgment could undermine constitutional governance, federalism and the will of the electorate by concentrating excessive powers in the hands of the President.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court delivered the judgment on Monday in a suit filed by governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who challenged President Bola Tinubu\u2019s suspension of Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Prof. Ngozi Odu, and members of the State House of Assembly during the political crisis in the state.<\/p>\n<p>Following the suspensions, the President appointed Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas (rtd.) as Sole Administrator of Rivers State for six months, effectively placing the state under federal control.<\/p>\n<p>Although the emergency rule has since expired and the suspended officials have resumed office, the apex court held that the President acted within his constitutional powers.<\/p>\n<p>Reacting, the ADC warned that the ruling grants the President wide discretion that could be abused against politically unfriendly governors.<\/p>\n<p>The party also argued that safeguards such as legislative oversight and judicial review are weak in practice, cautioning that the judgment could encourage what it described as \u201cconstitutional tyranny\u201d and gradual erosion of democratic norms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata The African Democratic Congress (ADC), has criticised the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling affirming the President\u2019s power to suspend elected governors and state assemblies during a state of emergency, warning that it poses a serious threat to Nigeria\u2019s democracy. In a statement on Tuesday, the party\u2019s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":80381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80380","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\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80382,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80380\/revisions\/80382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}