The Court of Appeal, Abuja, has nullified the expulsion of a former speaker of the Rivers House of Assembly, Martin Amaewhule, and 24 others from the assembly.<\/p>\n
A State High Court in Port Harcourt, in May,\u00a0barred the lawmakers from parading themselves as members of the state\u2019s House of Assembly after the defected from the PDP to the APC.<\/p>\n
The embattled lawmakers are backed by the immediate-past governor of the state, Nyesom Wike. Mr Wike, now FCT minister, is engaged in a protracted political battle with Governor Siminalayi Fubara over the control of the political structure in the oil-rich state.<\/p>\n
Three lawmakers loyal to Mr Fubara have been running the affairs of the state assembly since the court barred others from parading themselves as lawmakers.<\/p>\n
Delivering judgment on Thursday, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal held that the lower court lacked the jurisdiction to grant the exparte order, Channels TV reported.<\/b><\/p>\n
The appeal court held that Section 272(3) of the 1999 Constitution as amended gives the Federal High Court powers to determine whether the seat of a House of Assembly member has become vacant.<\/p>\n
It held that the Federal High Court has the exclusive jurisdiction to determine the vacancy of a House of Assembly seat.<\/p>\n
The express mention of the Federal High Court in Section 272 (3) of the Constitution automatically excludes all state high courts from having the jurisdiction, the court held.<\/p>\n
It ruled that the exparte order having been made without jurisdiction is null and void.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Court of Appeal, Abuja, has nullified the expulsion of a former speaker of the Rivers House of Assembly, Martin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-grassroots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8238,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8237\/revisions\/8238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}