In what can be regarded as mind boggling and barely 72 hours after Rivers State Governor Siminalayi presented the 2025 appropriation bill to four members of the State House of Assembly, Fubara has signed the N1.18trillion 2025 Budget into law.
It is instructive to note that Fubara signed the N1.18 trillion appropriation bill at the Government House in Port Harcourt on Thursday.
Speaking after the signing of the budget, Fubara said his administration is no longer concerned with the factions within the Rivers Assembly.
He said, “We have one assembly and that assembly is headed by Hon Victor Oko-Jumbo. As far as I’m concerned, we have moved on.
It is important to note that that Fubara had on Monday, presented the budget proposal to a four-member Rivers Assembly led by Victor Oko-Jumbo.
A total of N462,254,153,418 was allocated to recurrent expenditure and N678,088,433,692 for capital projects. This brings the total appropriation to N1,188,962,739,932.
But the latest development is a repeat of the presentation and signing of the 2024 Rivers budget proposal.
In December 2023, Fubara presented the state’s N800 billion budget estimate for 2024 to five-member of the River assembly led by Edison Ehie.
Barely 24 hours later, the Rivers Governor signed the 2024 appropriation bill into law.
Subsequently, Ehie resigned as a lawmaker and was appointed as chief of staff to the governor while his resignation indicated that the state lawmakers loyal to Fubara had been reduced to four.
With the above scenario, Oko-Jumbo took over as the speaker of the faction of the Rivers Assembly loyal to Fubara.
But the majority of the Rivers Assembly lawmakers led by Hon Martin Amaewhule are loyal to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike.
For the record, the Rivers Assembly had been factionalised since 2023, following the feud and the crisis of confidence between Fubara and Wike.
