Newscenter Media News The Rivers State Assembly has debunked claims by Governor Siminalayi Fubara that he was stopped from entering the Assembly to re-present the 2025 budget.
The governor had earlier on Wednesday told journalists that he was blocked from entering the parliament to present the appropriation bill to the Martins Amawhule-led Assembly as directed by the Supreme Court on February 28.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Dr. Enemi Alabo George, who reacted to the claim in a statement in Port Harcourt, described it as a mere comedy skit scripted to paint the House in bad light.
He said the House never received any official communication from the governor on his readiness to present the appropriation bill to the lawmakers.
The spokesman said: “We were the ones, who immediately after that judgement appealed to the governor to bring his appropriation bill. We acted immediately because we have the interest of the state at heart and didn’t want Rivers people to suffer any harm.
“Despite withholding our entitlements for over a year and demolishing our chambers, we still wanted him to hasten up the presentation in the interest of the progress of Rivers.
“We indicated our intentions in that letter and even gave him a timeframe because of the urgency of the matter. To regularise his appointments, we also urged him during our subsequent sitting to submit the names of his nominees for the positions of commissioners and some boards’ membership for screening and confirmation.
“But the Governor rebuffed our pleas. We sent employees of the Assembly to deliver these resolutions to him but as usual they turned them down at the gate and even brutalized them. We resorted to engaging the services of a courier company.
“But he still did not heed our call forgetting that there are essential services like hospitals, schools and others to be funded. Our intention was to finish everything about the budget on March 15th so that we could send necessary information and documents to relevant agencies of the government to allow the release of Rivers allocations at the end of March. But with what he is doing, we don’t know what he wants to achieve.
“How can he turn around to claim that we blocked him from re-presenting his budget? This is the height of insincerity. We even need the budget to be passed because the governor has been owing us our entitlements for more than a year and without the budget we can’t get our entitlements.
“The Governor and his team simply and deliberately acted Wednesday’s drama with a singular motive to tarnish the image of the Assembly. The governor is simply playing to the gallery to whip up unnecessary sentiments. But it has backfired because the truth has come out.”
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