📄 Abstract
On 18 March 2025, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu proclaimed a state of emergency in Rivers State pursuant to section 305 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), simultaneously suspending the elected Governor, his Deputy, and all members of the State House of Assembly for six months and appointing a retired military officer as Sole Administrator. The National Assembly endorsed the proclamation on 20 March 2025. This article interrogates the constitutional validity of those consequential measures and the broader question of democratic accountability that they raise. It argues that while section 305 vests the President with the power to proclaim a state of emergency in defined circumstances, that provision confers no express authority to suspend or remove democratically elected officials, whose tenure is separately governed by the Constitution’s closed removal code under sections 188, 69, and 110. The article examines the text and structure of section 305 within Nigeria’s federal architecture, traces the historical pattern of Fourth Republic emergency declarations, and provides a sustained doctrinal critique of both the threshold justification and the institutional consequences of the Rivers State proclamation. It analyses the Supreme Court’s judgment in AG Adamawa State & 10 Ors v AG Federation & Anor SC/CV/329/2025, delivered on 15 December 2025, which resolved the multi-state challenge on jurisdictional grounds while generating contested obiter pronouncements on the scope of presidential discretion during emergencies. Drawing on comparative experience from India, South Africa, Germany, and the United States, the article concludes that the Rivers State episode has exposed a constitutional ambiguity that demands authoritative judicial resolution and proposes four legislative reforms to section 305 to foreclose executive overreach in future emergencies.
🏷️ Keywords
📚 How to Cite:
Charity Emaviwe,Uchenna Eugene Okolocha , EMERGENCY, EXECUTIVE POWER, AND DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN NIGERIA: THE RIVERS STATE TEST OF SECTION 305 , Volume 11 , Issue 9, September 2026, EPRA International Journal of Research & Development (IJRD) , Pages: 1 - 7 ,