Governor Hyacinth Alia of Benue State has raised the alarm over what he described as a calculated and desperate plot by certain individuals to destabilise the state and remove him from office.
This was as the Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures of Nigeria, yesterday, rejected the recent summons issued by the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions to the Speakers of Benue and Zamfara states’ Houses of Assembly.
Speaking through his Chief Press Secretary, Tersoo Kula, during a briefing in Makurdi, yesterday, the governor alleged that a coordinated campaign of misinformation, along with sponsored protests and demonstrations, was being carried out to discredit his administration.
“These protests are not genuine expressions of public dissatisfaction,” the governor stated. “They are deliberately engineered by disgruntled individuals aiming to manipulate the public and provoke instability.”
The governor claimed that the campaigners’ goal was to create enough chaos to force President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in Benue. Describing the plot as a desperate attempt by those opposed to reform and progress to return the state to a “discredited status quo”, he accused the conspirators of exploiting the legal profession, citing ex-convicts posing as legal experts, unregistered groups filing petitions with “lies and offensive accusations,” and individuals impersonating lawyers at press briefings.
He called on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to investigate and take action against such misconduct. Alia reassured citizens that the state remains safe, the government stable and legislative activities ongoing without disruption.
THE summons, purportedly based on petitions from a civil society group, Guardians of Democracy and the Rule of Law, is viewed by the conference as an overreach of constitutional powers and a direct challenge to Nigeria’s federal structure and autonomy of state legislatures as guaranteed under the Constitution.
In a formal letter transmitted to the House committee, the speakers stated that the investigative and oversight powers of the National Assembly under Sections 88 and 89 of the Constitution were limited to federal matters. It emphasised that state legislatures were constitutionally independent arms of government, and their presiding officers could not be summoned over internal legislative issues, except where a clear constitutional or federal matter is involved.
Supporting this position, the speakers of the Benue and Zamfara legislatures have also written independently to express strong constitutional objections to the summons, affirming that the issues raised are purely domestic and fall outside the oversight jurisdiction of the National Assembly.
In a statement signed by the Chairman of the Conference of Speakers of State Legislatures, Adebo Ogundoyin, the conference warned that any attempt to erode the constitutional independence of state legislatures might set a dangerous precedent that could undermine democracy at the sub-national level.
It called on the National Assembly to uphold the principles of separation of powers and mutual institutional respect, while assuring Nigerians of its unwavering commitment to transparency, accountability and the rule of law at all levels of governance.
