House of Representatives

In recent times, the legality of cross carpet from one political parties to another as become a norm among members of the House of Representatives.

This is because the lower chamber recorded three episodes of defection within two weeks. The first set of defections was on October 7, 2020 when two of its members defected from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party to the ruling All Progressives Congress. The parties are also the minority and the majority in the chamber, respectively. The defectors were; Mr Ephraim Nwuzi, who is representing Etche/Omuma Federal Constituency in Rivers State; and Mr David Abel, representing Gashaka/Kurmi/Sardauna Federal Constituency in Taraba State.

Another member of the House, Mr Kolawole Lawal, would later on October 13, announce his return to the APC, from the Allied Peoples Movement.

A drama had played out when the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, read out separate letters from Abel and Nwuzi, announcing their defections to the members in plenary. Expectedly, the defection did not go down well with leaders of the opposition in the House.

The Minority Leader, Ndudi Elumelu; Deputy Minority Leader, Toby Okechukwu, and leader of the PDP caucus, Kingsley Chinda, separately raised constitutional points of order, asking Gbajabiamila to declare the seats of the defectors vacant as there was no crisis in the PDP chapters in the defectors’ respective states.

Okechukwu had said, “This motion is based on law and due process. It is very apparent that our colleagues who have written to defect were simply mooting the charisma of the speaker. Section 68(1)(g) of the constitution refers to the fact that there must be a crisis in a political party before a member (of the National Assembly) can defect. That presupposes that a member who does this contract to the constitution should lose their seat.

“I, hereby, ask Mr Speaker to observe and respect the law and the constitution by asking the members who have referred to his charisma in order to defect, that they should abide by the rules of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

Indeed, Section 68 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) lists various conditions by which a member of the National Assembly can retain or lose their seat.

Subsection 1 reads, “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a member if – (a) he becomes a member of another legislative house; (b) any other circumstances arise that, if he were not a member of the Senate or the House of Representatives, would cause him to be disqualified for election as a member; (c) he ceases to be a citizen of Nigeria; (d) he becomes President, Vice President, Governor, Deputy Governor or a Minister of the Government of the Federation or a Commissioner of the Government of a State or a Special Adviser.”

“(e) save as otherwise prescribed by this constitution, he becomes a member of a commission or other body established by this Constitution or by any other law. (f) without just cause he is absent from meetings of the House of which he is a member for a period amounting in the aggregate to more than one-third of the total number of days during which the House meets in any one year;

“(g) being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected; Provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored; or

“(h) the President of the Senate or, as the case may be, the Speaker of the House of Representatives receives a certificate under the hand of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission stating that the provisions of section 69 of this Constitution have been complied with in respect of the recall of that member.”

Subsection 2 reads, “The President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, shall give effect to the provisions of Subsection (1) of this section, so however that the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House of Representatives or a member shall first present evidence satisfactory to the House concerned that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of that member.”

Section 3 reads, “A member of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall be deemed to be absent without just cause from a meeting of the House of which he is a member, unless the person presiding certifies in writing that he is satisfied that the absence of the member from the meeting was for a just cause.”

Elumelu, who also read out the sections of the constitution cited by Okechukwu, stated that there was no crisis in the Rivers State chapter of the PDP, to have made the defection legitimate.

Chinda, who is also from Rivers, said, “Mr Speaker, let me remind you, sir, that you swore an oath, in fact, twice, as against other members of this House, to uphold the constitution. Mr Speaker, this morning, you are on trial. Democracy will judge us this morning. You are on trial because you have sworn to uphold the constitution. Mr Speaker, you are a pacesetter and another opportunity has presented itself for you to set another pace in our democratic experience. Mr Speaker, what members have said this morning is that we should uphold our constitution.”

He also cited a judgment by the Supreme Court on a case decided in 2007, which makes a lawmaker’s seat declared vacant if they defect illegally. He also cited a similar case in 2015 concerning Ondo State House of Assembly.

The Speaker, however, described leaders of the opposition as hypocrites, recalling that, as Minority Leader in the previous assemblies, he also protested against defections to the PDP but his arguments were dismissed. He had noted that the PDP failed to lay the foundation of sanctioning illegal defections while in power.

Gbajabiamila said, “Most of those who spoke were all here; what you have said, when I was the Minority Leader and we had people cross over from our party to your party, I said what you said on this floor; I even said 100 times more. I quoted laws and cases, but you shut me down. That is one. Two, I want you to look at the combined reading of Section 60 and the provisions of our House rules and privileges. If it had been the tradition of this House that people can cross, and they have done that over the years, and you have sanctioned it, I think it is the height of hypocrisy to come to the House today and begin to cite the things I cited until my voice broke, and tell me to do the right thing. I am going to do the right thing; don’t worry about that.”

Gbajabiamila also cited the case of a PDP member who had not been attending plenary in the chamber since it was inaugurated on June 11, 2019. He asked Elumelu to read Section 68(1)(f), which prescribes that a member will lose their seat if they fail to attend at least one-third of the sittings by the House.

The Speaker had said, “Three, since you are saying ‘do the right thing,’ I want you to read Section 68(1)(f). I’m sure, Minority Leader, that you are aware of members of your party – one, in particular, I won’t mention names – who has not been on the floor of this House since we started. Should I declare the seat vacant? I know of others too, not just this one.”

Elumelu, however, asked Gbajabiamila to order the Clerk to the House, Patrick Giwa, to confirm the claim on the attendance register.

Mocking the protesters, Gbajabiamila said, “Like you also told me in those days when I was Minority Leader, your points are noted. Any more defections?”

Again on October 13, 2020, Lawal also announced his defection from the APM to the APC. Perhaps Gbajabiamila had envisaged how the opposition leaders would react to the latest defection. He started by saying, “I have an announcement that pleases me; I believe it will please all of you – APC, PDP, no matter what party you are. It is from Kolawole Lawal. Change of party.”

Lawal, in the letter, recalled how he joined others to exit the APC in Ogun State ahead of the 2019 general elections to join the APM. Indeed, the Ogun State chapter of the APC had been polarised, with the then Governor Ibikunle Amosun leading a faction, and a former governor, Chief Olusegun Osoba, leading the other.

The Amosun-led faction had pulled out of the APC to contest elections on the platform of the APM. Candidates of the APM had lost at the polls, except Lawal.

Expectedly, Okechukwu, after Gbajabiamila read Lawal’s letter, raised a point of order to fault the lawmaker’s defection as breaching the constitution, by defecting from a party on whose platform he was elected where there was no division within the party. The Speaker, however, interjected Okechukwu to dismiss his argument, saying, “Are you raising the same argument as you did last week? Okay. Noted. Your point is noted. It is the same thing as last week.” He, therefore, hit the gavel to declare the matter closed.

Another ranking PDP member, Nicholas Ossai, also raised a point of order to cite Section 68(2) of the constitution. The Speaker also replied to Ossai, saying, “That constitutional point of order was raised last week. It was about to be raised by Hon Toby. And it was raised by my good self, four years ago. So, we have noted your point of order.”

Lawmakers should not be lawbreakers – Lawyer

Speaking on the issues, a former Vice President of the Nigeria Bar Association, Mr Monday Ubani, faulted Gbajabiamila for allowing the defections to pass when they failed to meet constitutional requirements.

The lawyer said, “Of course, you and I know that there is a constitutional provision for defection and the conditions that must be satisfied by any member that wants to defect from the political party that elected them to another. In the absence of satisfying those requirements, it will be very wrong for the Speaker or anybody whosoever to set aside the provision of the constitution and begin to allow defections, purely on politics and not legality. So, what the Speaker has said is actually wrong.

“I agree that, over time, we have not been able to see defections strictly based on constitutional provisions and that is something that we cannot in any way feel proud of. We have not been following our laws. If we have lawmakers – we are talking about the people who make laws – trying to now put aside the law and saying, ‘we are not going to follow the law, we will rather follow politics,’ it tells you about the health of the House and the National Assembly.

“They are the primary lawmakers and one would have expected them to insist on legality and not politics. So, it is clearly out of order for the speaker to say what he had said, more so when the speaker is a lawyer; he is a lawmaker and a lawyer who ought to know what the law says and the conditions for defection. He is clearly out of order. He has not said or done the right thing. That should be the precedence.”

Responding to a question on Gbajabiamila not declaring vacant the seats of absentee lawmakers allegedly in the opposition, Ubani also blamed the speaker.

The human rights lawyer said, “It is not right for him to ignore them. If there is a certain number of days expected of a member to attend sitting, and a member does not meet the requirement, one would have expected this 9th House to do the right thing. That is why we said this is a government of change. If we now have a speaker who says he is aware of certain persons who have not fulfilled the requirements to remain in the House but he chooses to ignore it, and he is not ready to apply the law and allow the hammer to fall on them, then he is also aiding and abetting connivance and collusion. This will not make us grow politically.”

A lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria, Prof Emmanuel Onyebuchi, said, “The reason why people easily defect from one political party to another in Nigeria is due to lack of a distinct ideology.”

Citing the example of the United States of America, he said there are families known as Republican, where the ideology and values of the Republican Party run through their daily life. He said there are also Democrats who have their own ideology and values, which they cherish, “so it becomes difficult for somebody to jump from one political party to another.”