onoS! That editorial is very factual and straight to the point.Uncle Sege has always been like that. Remember Odi? I want you to read my lips! In as much as I dont support Uncle seges methods, there would have been chaos and a lot of innocent lives lost if soldiers werent drafted to Yenagoa.I can assure you that Ebebi and co couldnt have initiated an impeachment. T.O ( Alams transport officer) is notorius for reprisal killings. You and I probably dont have the intelligence report available to President "I DEY KAMKPE" .
In my opinion, uncle sege's sin this time around is a lesser evil for which a lot of bayelsans will forgive him. Onos, I really dont care if other state govs loot their treasury.I dont actually believe in the entity called nigeria(I might be a believer if true federalism is in play). The welfare of the average Bayelsans is more impt to me now. I hope my brothers in In your state(Delta abi?) will take a cue and and investigate Ibori as well.

Eddie, u are smart. It's OK o o o. Make una do for Bayelsa as una want am. I think Uncle sege would not have dared to send troops to Yenagoa without the consent of the Ijaw folks.

So, now I know why things are like this with Alams. I pity him. How can one win by fighting against his own people? Only a fool dare do that.

Goodluck Eddie.


Sounds like Goodluck Jonathan, ur new Guvnor.

Make una no vex o. I don come again (Warri boy!).

Em, I like reading newspapers a lot, and when I stumbled across this Alams matter again, I say make I post am for my people to read.

Please do not read if you don't like long postings. And don't fire missiles at me this time, but to Prof Ben Nwabueze.

Eddie, abeg, take some minutes out of your busy schedule and read this write up. Maybe u go change ur mind. Don't get me wrong o, Alams na thief. Dem don catch am. He dey Lagos dey dance to the music wey him pay for.


Alamieyeseigha's removal: Coup against Constitution, Rule of Law
By chairman of The Patriots, foremost Constitutional lawyer, Prof. Ben Nwabueze

THE resolution adopted at a meeting of the House of Assembly on Tuesday November 29, 2005, requesting the state Chief Judge to appoint a seven-man panel under Section 188(5) of the constitution to investigate the allegation of gross misconduct contained in the impeachment notice, was passed by 15 members out of the membership of 24, which is one member less than the two-thirds majority of ALL the members required for the purpose by section 188(4). The meeting also purported irregularly to suspend the members who refused to join in passing the resolution. For this meeting, the 15 members who passed the resolution were brought to Yenogoa, the state capital, from Abuja where they were being quartered and taken back there after the meeting, for which reason they were referred to as "hostage" members, as indeed they were. They were certainly not free agents but were acting as directed by the Federal Government and the EFCC.

Fifthly, the power to appoint a seven-man panel to investigate the allegations of gross misconduct is, for good reason, entrusted to the state chief judge because he represents the third arm of government that is supposed to be independent of both the Executive and Legislative arms, and because he is an agent of the law enjoined by his oath of office to uphold the law impartially and faithfully without fear or favour.

In going ahead to appoint the investigating panel under section 188(5), notwithstanding the unconstitutional interference by the Federal Government and the EFCC in the impeachment process, it is obvious that the Chief Judge, Justice Emmanuel Igoniwari, acted not as a free agent, but under fear and irresistible pressure. As he, himself complained in a report in The Punch of Tuesday December 6, 2005:

"I was under unbelievable pressures from all corners. It was like a tsunami... Requests turned to threats and this was compounded by wicked or evil rumours. Some of the rumours and requests were even to the effect that a list of panel members would be drawn up for me to sign and the list would be taken away from me. Further that I might be whisked away and forced to sign a list, if continued to say no to offers or requests."

From a letter dated 2 December by Alamieyeseigha protesting the inclusion of four persons in the membership of the panel and similar protest by one of his supporters, it may be inferred that the Chief Judge might not entirely have resisted the pressures and threats.

Sixthly, of the many allegations of gross misconduct levelled against Governor Alamieyeseigha, only two, namely, jumping bail and failure to inform the House Assembly of his arrest and pending trial for money laundering in London, were considered and reported on by the investigating panel because, being notorious, self-evident and uncontroverted facts, they required no proof. These two alleged misconducts were not in the original list of allegations contained in the impeachment notice served on the Governor, and were only subsequently added. The other allegations were left for consideration in a future report because they require exhaustive investigation that is "bound to take a lot of time, resources an effort."

The panel was quite unsparing in the language used in its report to describe the gross nature and grave consequences of the misconduct of jumping bail, for which it so roundly and brutally condemned Alamieyeseigha, but it said nothing at all, not even one word, about the all-important question whether, as specifically stipulated in Section 188(2) of the Constitution, the act and omission in question amount to gross misconduct by Alamieyeseigha "in the performance of the functions of his office" as Governor of Bayelsa State. The failure by the panel to address this question could not have been other than that it was deliberately intended to avoid the conclusion that the two alleged misconducts did not constitute an impeachable offence in terms of Section 188(2) of the Constitution.

Only at the cost of doing great violence to language can it be said that Chief Alamieyeseigha was performing the functions of the office of Governor when he jumped bail or when he failed to inform the House of his arrest and pending trial for money laundering in London, gross as the misconduct on these two grounds might be. In any case, he was on leave of absence from office at the time, a fact on which the Speaker of the House was insistent when he said that the person recognised by the House as responsible for performing the functions of the office of Governor at the material time was, not Alamieyeseigha, but his Deputy whom the House had earlier appointed as acting Governor in the absence of Alamieyeseigha away on leave. It would be a manifest contradiction both to maintain that Alamieyeseigha was absent from duty on leave and at the same time that he was performing the functions of the office of Governor while on leave and while his Deputy was acting in the same office.

It is not without reason that only acts or omissions committed by the President or State Governor in the performance of the functions of his office are made the only impeachable offences by the Constitution. Otherwise the door would have been left so wide open for all sorts of allegations of gross misconduct, like rape or acts done before he assumed the office, to be trumped up against him but which have no connection whatsoever with the performance of the functions of his office.

Last but perhaps more decisive than the six illegalities listed above, the removal of Governor Alamieyeseigha in accordance with the rigorous and laborious process prescribed by Section 188 of the Constitution was dogged by yet another legal barrier more immediately calculated to frustrate and defeat the avowed determination of President Obasanjo to send him back to London from whence he had escaped to return to Nigeria. Two such barriers had suddenly but not unexpectedly sprung up.

The suspended members of the Bayelsa House of Assembly had, on Friday December 2, 2005, filed a suit in the State High Court against their 15 colleagues who earlier adopted the resolution requesting the Chief Judge to appoint an investigating panel. Joining the Chief Judge as co-defendant, they prayed the court, among other reliefs, for an injunction restraining the Chief Jude "whether by himself, agents, privies and servants from giving effect to any request from the 1st - 15th November 2005 or any other day whatsoever to appoint any investigative panel to investigate the governor of Bayelsa State." On the same day another suit was filed in the Supreme Court by the Attorney-General of Bayelsa State against the Attorney-General of the Federation claiming, among other reliefs, an order of injunction "restraining President Obasanjo and agencies of the Federal Government from any attempt to forcibly remove or induce the removal of Governor Alamieyeseigha from office" and from "further unlawful and unconstitutional interference in the administration of the state."

The effect of the filing of a suit seeking an injunction to restrain a defendant from doing certain acts is that his hands become as effectively tied as if an order of injunction has actually been made, provided he has notice of the suit. The position of the law upon this point is stated as follows by Obaseki JSC in Military Governor of Lagos State v. Ojukwu & Anor. (1986) NSSC (pt 1) 304 at pages 312 - 313, relying on a passage in the judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court in Edward Jones v. Securities and Exchange Commission 298 U.S. 1, at page 33.

"The rule is well settled both by the courts of England and of this country that where a suit is brought to enjoin certain activities, for example, the erection of a building or other structures, of which suit the defendant has notice the hands of the defendant are effectively tied pending a hearing and determination even though no restraining order or preliminary injunction be issued... He acts at his peril and subject to the power of the court to restore the status wholly irrespective of the merits as they may be ultimately decided" (emphasis supplied).

In Daniel v. Ferguson (1891) 2 Ch 27, one of the English decisions cited by the U.S. Supreme Court, a suit was brought to restrain the defendant from building so as to darken the plaintiff's lights. After receiving notice of a motion for temporary injunction and before the motion was heard, the defendant put a large number of men to work on the building, running a wall up to a height of about 39 feet from the ground in anticipation of the order of the court. The court of Appeal (England) ordered the wall to be pulled down. Kay L.J. said at page 30:

"Whether he turns out at the trial to be right or wrong, a building which he has erected under such circumstances ought to be at once pulled down, on the ground that the erection of it is an attempt to anticipate the order of the court. To vary the order under appeal would hold out an encouragement to other people to hurry on their buildings in the hope that when they were once up the court might decline to order them to be pulled down. I think that this wall ought to be pulled down now without regard to what the result of the trial may be."

Depending on the facts of each case, the appropriate order which the court may make in order to restore the status quo between the parties may be an order to pull down a building an order declaring the defendant's act in question null and void or an order restraining the continuation or repetition of such offending act. The decision of Egbue J. in Isiadinso & Others v Igwe Osita Agwuna III & Another, Suit No. A/98/92 is a case in which the last two remedies were applied. After being served with notice of a motion to restrain them from holding a meeting scheduled for a specified date to consider the revised Constitution of Enugwu Ukwu Town, the defendants went ahead and held the meeting as scheduled, at which the Revised Constitution of Enugwu Ukwu Town was considered.

The Court, after positing to itself the question, "what then is the court to do in the circumstance of this application? Proceeding to make an order (I) declaring null and void the meeting held by the defendants on the scheduled date insofar as it considered or in any way dealt with the Revised Constitution of Enugwu Ukwu Town (ii) restraining the defendants, their servants agents and privies from holding any meeting to consider or in any manner deal with the Revised Constitution of Enugwu Ukwu Town. In the words of the Learned Judge:

"The action of the defendants is calculated to lower the authority of this court and to interfere with the course of justice... The cases show that where a party with notice or even knowledge of the motion hurried and concluded the act sought to be retrained by an injunction, the court does not accept the act as a fait accompli. The court has always redressed the balance as between the parties at page 10 of the cyclostyled judgment (emphasis supplied).

Thus the report of the investigating panel and the removal of Alamieyeseigha, based on the report, with knowledge of the pendency of the two suits are null and void under the principle of law laid down in these decided authorities.

To anticipate the legal consequences arising from the filing of the two suits, the members of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly were again brought, under heavy police and military escort, from their temporary base in Abuja to Yenagoa. With the House surrounded by soldiers armed to the teeth, it sat, approved the panel's report and adopted a resolution removing Alamieyeseigha from office as Governor of Bayelsa State. This had to be done because it would have been an intolerable affront to the President to have allowed the law to override his will and power.

Conclusion

The plain, undeniable truth is that Governor Alamieyeseigha was removed from office, not by the members of the Bayelsa State House of Assembly in accordance with the process provided by the constitution but by President Obasanjo, backed by the police and military forces under his control, and using the members of the House as mere tools or agents. That is a federal system the Federal Government should unconstitutionally arrogate to itself power to suspend the Governor of a State from office, as it did in Plateau State in May 2004, or to remove him completely, as happened in Bayelsa State in December 2005, is a subversion of federalism and a coup against the constitution.

It is sad that the true character of these events as a subversion of and a coup against the Constitution is being concealed from the Nigerian people by dressing them up in the garb of a "war' against corruption, which is a highly emotive cause intensely popular among the population. The Nigerian pubic sees every corrupt official as a criminal undeserving of the protection of the Constitution and the laws. But a people incapable of rising above this kind of depraved mob sentiment is not ripe for constitutional democracy. We must not let our understandable abhorrence of corruption overbear our faith in constitutional democracy and the Rule of Law as the most acceptable system for the government of human society. It is more regrettable that lawyers subscribe to this mob sentiment.

Finally, the war against corruption is a noble cause, which should be supported wholeheartedly and energetically by all Nigerians, but it should be fought according to, not in subversion of the rule embodied in the supreme law of the country.

Professors my foot...


These same "proffessors" of law will be the last people you'll see around when the shit hits the fan..

How many of them have u seen agitating for corrupt people to be probed..

They are only exercising their intellectual grey matter 'cos it's an area in which they claim to have some degree of knowledge or specialization.. How many of them in their capacity as "Custodians of the Law" have ever instituted petitions or independent investigations into corrupt practices??.. How many??

Yet, when something which they percieve as going against what they believe is the rule of Law occurs, you'll see them crawling from under their legal books and making a lot of bruhaha..

They should all wake up and realize that extreme problems require extreme solutions.. which may at times appear extra-judicial in nature.. We can't all be bound by the Law (which if I must be frank, can be assinine sometimes..)
[Due process sounds nice on paper, but in reality can take months, if not years to come to fruition.. ]

The same Law which creates provisions for people to be exempted from prosecution, yet permits itself to be exploited for looting and stealing purposes..

The same law which allows people to be harrassed and molested by "Officers" of the law while going about their usual daily activities..

To use a Waffi term, They should free me bo...

@ ono na time u get,u hear for me i cant read such big things.Did u ever do sth like summary in english when u were @ skool.

Mikebuddy,
Na wa o. I said you should not read if you do not like long postings. I thot that's simple English enough. Abi you no dey fit read English for afternoon?

@ ono .Emm i read english @ all times but that one too much.Many people do pay in cafe to buy tickets after reading that one i guess they will have notin again to do even to check there e email box.

That man is talking rubbish.

This is what was sent to me in an email today. I don't even know these people as I live in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA!

ATTN: SIR/ MADAM

REMINDER

I am sorry for the informal way this mail is reaching you but i hope
you
will not mistake it as one of those scam leters that are swimming on
the
internet on daily basis.It is true that people are using different
means to
defraud people through the internet but i want you to use this two
websites
bellow to see authenticity of why i am contacting you.

My name is barrister C. Howells, a personal assistant to the Executive
Governor of Bayelsa state , Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha who was arrested
recently by the british government in conjunction with the Nigerian
power
brokers and was charge for money laundering in the United Kingdom.

View: http://www.bayelsagov.com
You can find the news on the BBC news link below:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4291350.stm

My boss later found his way back to Nigeria.And a week after his
arrival to
Nigeria,to resume his gubernertorial position in the state, the Bayelsa
state house of assembly passed an impeachment motion and subsequently
impeached him from his seat as the Governor.

This developement has removed the immunity clause which was granted him
by
the Nigeria constitution, living him as an ordinary Nigerian. The
Nigerian
police has finally arrested him and he is in detention awaiting
trial.And
from all available information the British and the Nigerian government
are
poised to incarcerate him.And as his personal assitant he has
personally
requested that I commence on an immediate search for a partner who
will act
as the next of kin/beneficiary and take charge of his other finances in
the
likely event of his incarceration.

This shall be a business agreement and all relevant documentation to
make
you the beneficiary to his other finances including power of attorney,
letters of authority will be prepared. You will take charge of all
concerning this fund and will manage it based on your own discretion,
you
will also be entitled to a percentage of this fund.

If you go through the BBC news link above, you will see that my boss is
in a
very desperate situation and if he doesn't commence an immediate
transfer of
his other finances, he stands a chance of loosing everything. At the
moment,
his assets in London, worth about 10.Million Pounds has been
confiscated and
they are ready to sieze more.

This is why i am contacting you.If you are willing to work with me in
this
regard,you can reach me with the email address shown below. Then I can
furnish you with more facts about this. I am purposely withholding
other
vital details until you indicates your interest.

Please note that the amount of transfer in question is 18 million
United
States Dollars. kindly reply if you can assist us in this regard, if
not
please do not bother as we have no time to waste.

Your telephone and fax number shall be needed for easier communication
with
your full Names and full mailing address.
Thanks,

Yours sincerely
Barr C.Howells
contact email: howellschambers1@yahoo.com

I have gotten about 50 emails similar to this one from various persons.

Here's another one from Nigeria!

Dear Sir


I am Peter EZE. I am working in Audit Department of the Central Bank of
Nigeria , while auditing the account of the Federal Government, I
discovered
that there is contract awarded to one oil firm which the Government is
yet
to foot the bill.

The problem is that the Government could not pay the firm after the
firm has
completed the contracton because of lacf of fund. Now the Government is
ready to settle the debt, but the problem is that the contractor is
dead. So
I need someone who can help me to pose himself as the contractor so
that we
can claim themoney.

The Amount of money in question is about US$50M. I am ready to provide
all
the Documents necessary for the deal if only you can help me claim the
money
for 30% will be for you 65% while 5% for miscellaneous expenses
incurred
during the transaction.I look forward to hearing from you immediately
you
receive WITH this email, auditpeter1@yahoo.co.uk

Best Regard.
Dr Peter EZE
[color=#000099][/color]

[size=30pt]BOMBA ! ! ! [/size]


Dem don come.. ! ! ! 

Why did the chicken cross the road

Alams:it ran out of good luck!!

[color=#000099][/color][b][/b][size=8pt][/size]Spammers RUN!

y'all are screaming for alams' head. is he the only one involved in such activities? those at the helm of affairs in the country should be probed. let those with logs in their eyes stop tryin to remove the specks in other peoples eyes. i didnt mention names oh!!!!

the truth is bitter but it must be told; what has happened in bayelsa has been replayed again in ibadan. What goes round comes round; its a pity you guys in the diaspora are not around to see what's going on. Little by little everyone is loosing faith in the government. The lawyers and learned men no longer respect their court judgments. The police man has started choosing which orders he will obey and which he will ignore. The businessman has stopped paying tax afterall he generates his own electricity and water. The armed gangs in the niger delta are now becoming nameless, faceless and deadlier. God Help Us.

What's the lot of Alams now? Who knows where he is?

@ Ono if you dont know i do he is in EFCC barkyard.

@ Ono if you dont know i  do he is in EFCC backyard.

MaoriWahin:


My name is barrister C. Howells, a personal assistant to the Executive
Governor of Bayelsa state , Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha who was arrested
recently by the british government in conjunction with the Nigerian
power
brokers and was charge for money laundering in the United Kingdom.And as his personal assitant he has
personally
requested that I commence on an immediate search for a partner who
will act
as the next of kin/beneficiary and take charge of his other finances in
the
likely event of his incarceration.Please note that the amount of transfer in question is 18 million
United
States Dollars.
I have gotten about 50 emails similar to this one from various persons.

Big fraud!