House of Representatives member from Rivers State, Solomon Bob, has called on the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to return the N300 million given to them by suspended Governor Siminalaye Fubara.

Bob, in a statement Thursday in Abuja, maintained that the NBA’s claim that the money was a gift is unreasonable and unbecoming of a “self-appointed ombudsman”, and proof that they were engaged in a relationship of compromise with Fubara.

The lawmaker demanded that the money be returned to the coffers of the Rivers State government, failing which it behooves the authorities in Port Harcourt to take every necessary step to recover the money.

The lawmaker accused the NBA of insincerity, hypocrisy, and “misguided praetorian pretensions” following the association’s condemnation of the state of emergency in Rivers State in another statement on Thursday, 10th April.

Justifying the declaration of a state of emergency in his home state, Bob said the NBA “cannot circumscribe or amend the clear, untrammelled and discretionary powers granted the President by Section 305 of the Constitution. Neither is the NBA in a position to interpret or determine what measures qualify as extraordinary, which the President is required to adopt under the same section.”

The lawmaker stated that the NBA does not have “the jurisdictional competence or ethical example to be a barometer for measuring democracy and constitutionalism.”

He claimed that an association of lawyers, which should be a model of democratic participation, has become a cartel for pursuing narrow interests to the point where the NBA is “unable organise its elections based on the principle of universal franchise, devoid of zoning.”

Bob said that since the fiasco of the 1992 conference, the “so-called NBA elections are no more than predetermined coronation of regional or even ethnic hegemons.”

While also describing the NBA’s statement as a distraction, the federal lawmaker stated that: “Having witnessed Fubara’s dangerous and incomparable incompetence first-hand, and the embarrassing diminution his actions have exposed my state to, I consider the statement arrogant and a gratuitous insult.”

He charged the NBA of “rank hypocrisy and insincerity because it stood idly by without a whimper when suspended governor Siminilayi Fubara exhibited the type of crass lawlessness and wanton irresponsibility never before seen in any state in Nigeria.”

Bob said that the NBA’s priorities lay elsewhere. He claimed that “the NBA had got itself entangled in a sweetheart deal with Fubara, a quid pro quo, and it was set to use the Port Harcourt conference to whitewash the worst misgovernment of any state in Nigeria.”

He stated that the NBA’s statement on the Rivers situation carefully concealed their pecuniary interest and only belatedly admitted receiving a huge advance payment from Fubara after the authorities in Port Harcourt exposed the deal by publicly demanding a refund of the money.