Barely 24 hours after the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) stated that the federal government had halted statutory allocations to the Rivers State Government in compliance with a court judgement, the OAGF has reversed itself, saying that the state will continue to receive its allocations following an appeal by the state government.
A judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja, Justice Joyce Abdulmalik, had on October 30 described the disbursement of monthly allocations to the state since January as a clear constitutional breach and halted it.
The Director of Press and Public Relations at the OAGF, Bawa Mokwa, announced on Friday that it halted the disbursement of October revenue payment to Rivers State, citing the Federal High Court judgement.
He emphasised that the federal government would respect the court order with due diligence until a contrary order was issued.
But at the hearing of the appeal filed by Governor Siminalaye Fubara at the Appeal Court on Friday, the governor, through his lawyer, Yusuf Ali, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), prayed a three-member panel of the court led by Justice Hamma Barka, to vacate the order issued by the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Ali and other lawyers to the appellants urged the court to allow his client’s appeal and nullify the lower court’s order.
But the Martin Amaewhule-led faction of the Rivers State House of Assembly, which obtained the Federal High Court judgement, asked the court to dismiss the appeal.
They made their submissions in court through their team of lawyers led by Joseph Daudu (SAN).
After the parties adopted their respective written addresses, the Court of Appeal panel said the date of judgment would be communicated to the parties.
Speaking to an online medium, Mokwa said although there had been a court order stopping the distribution of allocations to the state, the decision of the Appeal Court overrides the previous order.
He confirmed that the appeal effectively overrides the earlier court decision, stressing that allocations to the state will continue pending the outcome of the legal process.
“We are going to obey court orders. Yesterday, after a report that the state would not be paid, the Rivers State government sent a notification of appeal to that effect,” he said.
“So, logically, we are going to obey court orders. The notification depicts that there is a stay of execution, which means we will maintain the status quo. It means the state will be given allocation,” he added.
In December 2023, Governor Fubara presented an N800 billion budget estimate to the Edison Ehie faction of the House of Assembly.
In July, the state House of Assembly and Martins Amaewhule, the factional speaker, instituted a suit against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and nine others.
The Amaewhule faction of the assembly sought an order of interlocutory injunction restraining the CBN, the commercial banks, and the Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), from granting any financial instruction from Fubara.
On October 30, a Federal High Court in Abuja restrained the CBN from disbursing financial allocations to the state government.
The court held that monies from the Federation Account should not be released to the state pending the passage of a lawful appropriation act by a validly constituted House of Assembly.
The presiding judge, Justice Abdulmalik, delivered the judgment in the suit filed by the Rivers State House of Assembly led by Amaewhule.
Justice Abdulmalik held that Fubara was wrong to have presented the state’s 2024 Appropriation Bill to a five-member assembly “that was not properly constituted.”
James Emejo
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