Leaders of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC), Eastern Zone, have taken the Federal Government to the ECOWAS Court of Justice, challenging what they call the illegal suspension of Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara and other elected officials by President Bola Tinubu. Led by Comrade Ibiso Harry, the 12 litigants also contested Tinubu’s declaration of a State of Emergency in Rivers State. In their suit, marked **ECW/CCJ/APP/18/25**, the applicants urged the regional court to overturn the suspension of elected officials and the dismantling of democratic structures in Rivers State, calling it essential for restoring full democracy. They also sought a court order nullifying all decisions, policies, and directives issued by the Sole Administrator appointed by Tinubu on March 18 to govern the state for six months. The case is based on Articles III and IV of the supplementary protocol amending the ECOWAS Court’s protocol, Article II of the Protocol of the Court, and Article 33 of the Court’s Rules. The applicants argued that President Tinubu, as an elected official, lacks the authority to remove or suspend a state governor, who was also elected. Furthermore, they contended that the removal of Governor Fubara, Deputy Governor Ngozi Odu, and members of the Rivers State House of Assembly was a grave violation of their fundamental human rights. “By so doing, the Defendant has unlawfully taken away the democratic rights of the Applicants and that of the population of Rivers State both individually and collectively,” they added. According to the Applicants, President Tinubu’s actions have not only drowned, diffused and collapsed their constitutional rights and that of the people of the state in neo-junta governance but also put them into an unconstitutional, undemocratic and arbitrary manner of governance which they cannot fit into. “The implication therefore is that the applicants and the people of Rivers State have lost their existence and dignity as human beings, having been politically emasculated by the loss of the values that accompany democratic governance and deprived of leaders duly elected by them in the democratic space.” They maintained that President Tinubu’s actions was antithetical to tenets of democracy, adding that the president exhibited “absoluteness in determining the existence and functioning of democratic systems in national sub-units by upturning and collapsing entrenched democratic systems.” “The deliberate disruption of the democratic order in any part of the national structure questions the democratic practice and constitutional authenticity of the nation state, as the forceful removal of popular sovereignty in a part or fraction of the national landscape translates to the non-existence of liberal democracy and non-application and conformity with constitutional norms in the entire federation. “The enthronement of an illegal and unconstitutional order in any form within a constitutional democracy threatens the very idea of freedom and precipitates loss of genuineness on the part of the state and its institutions of any legitimate claim to a constitutional democracy. “A state of emergency cannot be guise or subterfuge for the usurpation of the executive functions of the Governor or the exercise of the law making powers of the legislature,” the applicants averred in an affidavit they filed in support of the legal action they lodged through a team of lawyers led by Chief Festus Ogwuche.