By Davies Iheamnachor

PORT HARCOURT: Rivers State House of Assembly has disagreed with Governor Siminalayi Fubara that he was barred from accessing the House to re-present the 2025 Appropriation Bill.

The House said it never received any official communication from the governor announcing his interest to bring the state’s 2025 Appropriation Bill to the floor of the House.

Spokesperson of the House, who is also Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Dr. Enemi George, described the governor’s claims as a mere comedy skit scripted to paint the House bad.

George noted that on March 3, the House of Assembly wrote to the governor requesting him to bring his 2025 Appropriation Bill to the lawmakers following the judgement of the Supreme Court.

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 brutalised 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.”

George maintained that the letter the governor claimed he sent to the Speaker never got to the recipient, adding that it was after Wednesday’s sitting that the lawmakers saw the letter flying on social media.

He said: “But even the letter trending on social media was dated March 11. Does it mean that the governor purportedly sent a letter on Tuesday God knows when, and immediately mobilised to the assembly quarters on Wednesday morning claiming he came to present his budget?

“That alone vitiates the claimed purpose. It is procedurally trite that after writing to the Assembly, the governor ought to wait for the letter to be acknowledged by the lawmakers, who will then invite him to appear before them and make his presentation. Governor Fubara ought to know this if he is sincere.

“But all we know is that this Assembly will continue to uphold the rule of law and will remain committed to promoting the interest of Rivers State. We urge him to do the needful so that Rivers people can breathe. He is toying with the lives and livelihood of Rivers people.”