When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State in March, he sent a letter of proclamation to the National Assembly for passage. Relying on Section 305 of the Constitution, the President cited insecurity and violence as the basis for the declaration. The procedure for a valid proclamation of a state of emergency is clearly spelt out in Section 305(2) of the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Section reads as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe President shall, immediately after the\npublication, transmit copies of the Official Gazette of the Government of the\nFederation containing the proclamation, including the details of the emergency,\nto the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives,\neach of whom shall forthwith convene or arrange for a meeting of the House of\nwhich he is President or Speaker, as the case may be, to consider the situation\nand decide whether or not to pass a resolution approving the proclamation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When the President submitted his letter to both\nchambers of the National Assembly, the resolutions of both houses were supposed\nto be uniform and identical. It does not appear this happened. Both chambers\napproved the proclamation of a state of emergency\u2014with what they each described\nas \u201cdifferent modifications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, the legislative procedure for passage of a bill\nis clear: for it to be valid, it must be the same in both houses. Otherwise,\nthe two chambers are expected to meet to harmonize any differences. That\nharmonization never took place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the resolution by the House of Representatives,\nlawmakers adopted the establishment of a National Committee to mediate and\nrestore peace in the state. The Senate, on the other hand, adopted a different\nresolution, calling instead for the establishment of an ad hoc committee to\nmediate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, the Senate invoked Section 11(4), which\nauthorizes the National Assembly to assume legislative powers of a state\u2014but\nthe House of Representatives did not pass this same resolution<\/em>. The\ndeliberation on the President\u2019s proclamation letter concluded just a day after\nit was submitted, and there is no evidence that the differing votes of both\nchambers were reconciled, or that a uniform resolution was ever transmitted\nback to the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This violates the legislative process and suggests that\nthe state of emergency proclamation for Rivers State was never validly\nconcluded in the National Assembly. Critics argue this means the declaration never\nreceived proper legislative approval, as required under the Constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More questions of unconstitutionality have also been\nraised, particularly over the use of voice votes\u2014which critics argue is not\nwhat the Constitution envisions for such a weighty matter as a state of\nemergency proclamation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, the situation continues to unfold. The House\nof Representatives is already in full gear, setting up what it calls an Ad\nHoc Committee for Rivers State Oversight<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, constitutional concerns arise. Section 11(4) is\nvery clear that the National Assembly\u2014as a whole\u2014may exercise legislative\npowers over a state, only under specific conditions. It does not empower a\nsub-unit like an ad hoc committee of just one chamber to do so. Nevertheless,\nthe House\u2019s ad hoc committee has proceeded to invite the so-called Sole\nAdministrator to appear before it. It is unclear in what capacity\u2014either for\nthe Sole Administrator, or for the said ad hoc committee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once again, these constitutional transgressions are\nraising alarm bells among Nigeria\u2019s democracy watchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State in March, he sent a letter of proclamation to the National Assembly for passage. Relying on Section 305 of the Constitution, the President cited insecurity and violence as the basis for the declaration. The procedure for a valid proclamation of a state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3799,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions\/3799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}