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By Inibehe Effiong

@inibeheeffiong

I have read the 14 pages summary of the judgement of the Supreme Court on the Rivers State emergency case (Attorney General of Adamawa State & 10 Ors. V. Attorney General of the Federation & Anor.).

Most of the media reports on the decision do not accurately reflect the reasoning of the Apex Court.

Going by the summary, the Supreme Court did not explicitly endorse the emergency rule in Rivers State as proclaimed by President Bola Tinubu.

However, the reasoning of the majority of the Learned Justices (6-1), appears to have accommodated the possibility of a state of emergency interfering with the democratic structures of the affected State(s) or parts of the Federation.

The Apex Court seems to have avoided making a definitive pronouncement on the constitutionality of this particular state of emergency.

Also, the Court found that voting in the House of Representatives, for the purpose of emergency proclamation, has to be by ordering a division, with votes recorded by name, constituency, and choice, and published accordingly.

In the Rivers case, voting in the House of Representatives was done by voice votes in contravention of the Standing Orders of the House; a deviation from the finding made by the Supreme Court.

My understanding, going by the printed summary of the majority decision which was read by My Lord, Mohammed Baba Idris, JSC, is that the emergency rule in Rivers was unlawful having not been endorsed by the National Assembly in line with the prescribed legal procedure.

The last point that I want to make is that the Supreme Court found that the States that brought the suit as plaintiffs, did not disclose a reasonable cause of action, and that the Court’s original jurisdiction could not be invoked by the 11 States because the emergency rule was not declared in any of those States, and the States did not obtain the consent of Rivers State to file the suit.

The Court found that there was no dispute between the Federation and those States.

The Apex Court accordingly struck out the suit.

By law, once a suit is struck out, pronouncements made therein no not have the binding and effective weight of a decision made by a court that is clothed with the requisite jurisdiction.

The Apex Court only commented briefly on the merits of the case because of its grave constitutional significance.