Rivers State Emergency Rule. What Did the Supreme Court Actually Say?

The Supreme Court 

Once again, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has left us in utter confusion following yesterday’s ruling in the case brought before it by 11 People’s Democratic Party (PDP) state governors against the Federal Government.

The confusion is of two folds. First is what was widely reported by major news outlets immediately after the judgment. Second is how legal luminaries such as Femi Falana have interpreted the same ruling.

I had initially set out to interrogate the judgement based on the former, until I saw Falana’s statement.

But before we get to that, let’s start from the beginning.

Background to the Rivers State Emergency Rule

Monday’s ruling stems from the state of emergency declared in Rivers State by President Bola Tinubu in March following the political crisis that engulfed the state and the subsequent suspension of elected officials including Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, Ngozi Odu, and members of the State House of Assembly.

According to widely circulated reports, the apex court held that Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) grants the President broad discretionary powers to determine the “extraordinary measures” required during a state of emergency. The court was reported to have said the Constitution did not expressly define the scope of “extraordinary measures,” thereby leaving room for presidential discretion to determine what that is.

Questions About Judicial Interpretation

On that basis, I had wanted to ask whether the Supreme Court got it right, or whether we are set for another round of debate on the competence of the apex court in interpreting our laws.

Although I am not a lawyer, my training as a journalist and experience following court judgments over the past decade have left me with more questions than answers especially given the controversies that seem to trail many high-profile judgments.

The Imo State Governorship Precedent

For instance, consider the 2019 Imo State governorship election. After the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared Emeka Ihedioha of the PDP winner of the March 9, 2019 election, a seven-member Supreme Court panel later ruled that votes from 388 polling units had been unlawfully excluded from the tally. When those votes were added, the court concluded that Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) actually had the majority of lawful votes and should have been declared governor instead. Consequently, the court voided Ihedioha’s election and declared Uzodinma the winner, prompting his inauguration as governor.

That judgment sparked serious debate about judicial reasoning and electoral integrity, particularly because Uzodinma had originally placed fourth in the election with fewer votes reported by INEC. 

Akpabio and Lawan. Technicalities Over Substance?

Another example is the controversy surrounding party primaries involving Godswill Akpabio (now Senate President) and Ahmed Lawan (then Senate President) ahead of the 2023 general elections. Both did not take part in the first INEC-monitored primaries in their constituencies, having contested in the APC presidential primary instead. Fresh primaries were later held, producing Akpabio and Lawan as candidates, but these were not monitored by INEC, raising questions about legality.

Critics highlighted “double candidacy” concerns, since contesting two primaries at the same time is seen as conflicting with the Electoral Act 2022. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in both cases on technical grounds. In Lawan’s case, it held that the plaintiff started the case with originating summons without providing oral evidence of alleged fraud, and in Akpabio’s case, the lower courts were deemed to lack jurisdiction, treating it as an internal party matter.

The Supreme Court and Local Government Autonomy

Then there is the landmark Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy delivered in July 2024, in a suit filed by the Attorney General of the Federation on behalf of the Federal Government. In that judgment, the apex court held that it is unconstitutional for state governors to withhold local government funds, dissolve democratically elected local government councils, or replace them with caretaker committees.

The court affirmed that allocations from the Federation Account must be paid directly to elected local governments, and that the state’s retention of the local government funds is unconstitutional. According to Justice Emmanuel Agim who read the judgement, “Demands of justice requires a progressive interpretation of the law. It is the position of this court that the federation can pay LG allocations to the LGs directly or pay them through the states.

“In this case, since paying them through states has not worked, justice of this case demands that LG allocations from the federation account should henceforth be paid directly to the LGs.”

This judgment came despite the constitutional provision of a state-local government joint account.

Autonomy Versus Constitutional Amendment

Even with that judgement, local government autonomy remains one of the items under review in the ongoing constitutional amendment process. This raises a critical question. If the Supreme Court has already interpreted the Constitution as providing financial and democratic autonomy for local governments, what exactly is the current constitutional review seeking to amend or clarify? Is the autonomy already settled law, or is the court’s interpretation itself insufficient? 

Returning to Rivers. Interpreting “Extraordinary Measures”

It is against this backdrop that the latest judgment in Attorney General of Adamawa State and Others v Attorney General of the Federation raises similar concerns- the interpretation of our laws.

In the latest case, I have pondered, if the framers of the Constitution deliberately left the phrase “extraordinary measures” open to interpretation, did they envisage that such measures would include the suspension of a sitting governor?

If a governor is removed during a state of emergency, what purpose does that serve? Is the governor presumed to be an enabler of the insecurity that necessitated the emergency in the first place? And does suspending him necessarily remove the impediment to restoring peace?

Section 188 and the Question of Removing a Governor

More importantly, how does such suspension align with Section 188 of the Constitution, which clearly provides that a governor can only be removed through impeachment by the State House of Assembly, or by a court of law following established constitutional procedures?

Falana’s Intervention and Media Interpretation

All of these questions were running through my mind until I read Falana’s statement.

According to him, “In its judgment delivered on December 15, 2025 in Attorney-General of Adamawa State & Ors v. Attorney-General of the Federation (Suit No. SC/CV/329/2025), the Supreme Court dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked the legal basis to maintain the action. However, the court went on to consider the merit of the substantive case. Curiously, the judgment has been wrongly interpreted by the media. Contrary to misleading reports, the Supreme Court did not endorse the dissolution of democratic structures during emergency rule in any state of the federation. In the leading judgment, Justice Mohammed Baba Idris JSC stated that Section 305 of the Nigerian Constitution does not confer power on the President to temporarily dissolve executive and legislative institutions of a state during an emergency rule.”

According to The PUNCH newspaper, Falana quoted the Justice as stating that government powers under the Constitution are divided among the executive, legislature, and judiciary, shared across the federal, state, and local government levels, with no arm or tier constitutionally superior to another.

With these statements, I was forced to do a backtrack, and I am left wondering. Who is reporting right and who is reporting wrong? Could all the media outlets that reported a broad interpretation of the judgment really have missed the nuance? If so, what does that say about journalism, journalists, and their duty to accurately convey complex legal information to the public?

Could a respected legal luminary like Falana have misinterpreted the judgment? Or is it the media that has oversimplified the ruling to the point of distortion? Either way, is this the end of the controversial judgments occasionally coming from the country’s apex court?

Who Got It Wrong. The Media or the Court?

With these statements, I was forced to do a backtrack, and I am left wondering. Who is reporting right and who is reporting wrong?

Another Legal View

Meanwhile, another lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, was quoted as saying that the judgment did not explicitly endorse the state of emergency as declared by President Tinubu in Rivers. Instead, it simply acknowledged that the majority opinion of the justices appeared to leave open the possibility of interference with democratic structures in any emergency, without making a definitive pronouncement on the constitutionality of that specific emergency.

Hear him. 

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

“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”

Talk about utter confusion.

Isn’t this a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other? What difference does it make if the court did not explicitly rule on the Rivers emergency rule.? By "accommodating the possibility of a state of emergency interfering with the democratic structures of the affected state(s)", has the court not indirectly made a pronouncement on the Rivers case? Why would the Supreme Court make declarations about future possibilities instead of concentrating on the substantive question before it? Did the court speak ambiguously, leaving room for differing interpretations? What precedent has this judgment actually set, if any?

The Central Question

Most importantly. What did the Supreme Court actually say in its judgment?