The APC leadership gloats and grandstands with éclat and unusual brinkmanship that PDP will not produce the Senate president or Speaker of the House of Representatives. They boast that PDP will not produce the Deputy speaker of the House of Representatives, Leader, or Chief Whip of the bi-camera NASS. They even, in a most impolitic, tactless and brash manner, engage in extreme boasting, gasconade, braggadocio and cock-a-doodle-doo. They swagger, brag and swank that no Senator or House of Representatives member from the PDP opposition (except the APC) will have Chairmanship of any of the plum, first rate committees of either House, except the Public Accounts Committee which is usually conventionally reserved for the opposition. I am amazed at such puerity and political naivety.
I am sure the Aspirants to the Senate Presidency like Ahmed Lawan, Ali Ndume and Danjuma Goje, will be having their stomachs churning with discomfort at such a suicidal mission.
Do APC spin doctors remember history at all? Or, are they like the Bourbons of European history who learnt nothing and forgot nothing, to the extent that even after the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, the second world war still broke out between 1940 and 1945, killing millions of people; including the destruction of the twin Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the atomic bomb.
Have these APC political magicians read sections 50 and 92 of the 1999 Constitution, and that politics is not a game of exclusion, but one of inclusion, horsetrading, diplomatic engineering and political alignment and re-alignment.
For the avoidance of doubt, the said sections provide as follows:
1. There shall be:- (a) a President and a Deputy President of the Senate, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves; and (b) a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves.
2. The President or Deputy President of the Senate or the Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives shall vacate his office- (a) if he ceases to be a member of the senate or of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, otherwise than by reason of a dissolution of the Senate or of the House of Representatives. (b) when the House of which he was a member first sits after any dissolution of that House; or (c) if he is removed from office by a resolution of the Senate or of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, by the votes of not less than two-third majority of the members of that House. (Emphasis supplied).
(92) Speaker of House of Assembly
1. There shall be a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves.
2. The Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the House of Assembly, shall vacate his office-
(a) if he ceases to be a member of House of Assembly, otherwise than by reason of a dissolution House. (b) when the House first sits after any dissolution of that House; or (c) if he is removed from office by a resolution of the Senate or of the House of Assembly, as the case may be, by the votes of not less than two-third majority of the members of the House. (Emphasis supplied).
MY 2015 INTERVENTION ON A SIMILAR SCENARIO
On the 7th of May, 2015, I had written extensively on the crisis then rocking the APC and the Senate, concerning the party’s disagreement with the emergence of Dr Bukola Saraki as the Senate president. In the article titled “The Political rumble in the legislative jungle of the 8th National Assembly”, which was serialized in the Sunday telegraph, I had x-rayed the thorny issues. The APC does not appear to have learnt from history in its recent threats of fire and brimstone as to how it plans to externally impose the leadership of the 9th National Assembly (the party never recovered from the 2015 internal schism). Let me now reproduce excerpts of the 2015 write up: “The clear provisions of section 54 (1) of the 1999 Constitution provides, most laconically, that, “the quorum of the Senate or the House of Representatives shall be one-third of all members of the legislative House concerned”. One-third, it says.
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“Using the Senate as a case study here, there are 109 Senators……… One-third of 109 is 36.3333 Senators. To avoid dismembering a human being with a view to achieving 36.3333, and to avoid a repetition of the infamous 1979 Shagari-Awolowo 122/3electoral brouhaha (well done, Chief Richard Akinjide, SAN, the ingenious Architect of this mathematical novelty), let us approximate one-third to be 37 Senators. The Senators that unanimously elected Saraki unopposed, were 57. They later swelled to 87 before the election of the Deputy Senate President”.
“It therefore becomes crystal clear, even to the most trenchant and traducers of Saraki, that being elected unopposed by a Senate that had 57 Senators in the chambers, was actually 20 Senators beyond the Constitutional requirement of 37 Senators to form a quorum”.
“I have read Section 50 and other Sections of the 1999 Constitution, over and over again, but I have not stumbled upon any provision that stipulates how many members of a particular party (whether ruling, or opposition), must be present before a quorum is deemed formed; or that party chieftains must first support aspirants before they emerge leaders of both Houses; or that Legislators should first wait for Party directives before carrying out the provisions of Section 50 of the 1999 Constitution, which give them powers (and the inalienable right), to elect their leaders”.
“For the avoidance of doubt, proclamation of the National Assembly is a Constitutional matter covered by the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria. It is therefore, unthinkable for the same President who had earlier proclaimed the 8th National Assembly into existence to partisanly go for a mere party meeting, which is not a national assignment. By the provision of Section 64:
“(1) The Senate and the House of Representatives shall each stand dissolved at the expiration of a period of four years commencing from the date of the first sitting of the House.
(2) If the Federation is at war in which the territory of Nigeria is physically involved and the President considers that it is not practicable to hold elections, the National Assembly may by resolution extend the period of four years mentioned in subsection (1) of this section from time to time but not beyond a period of six months at any one time.
(3) Subject to the provisions of this Constitution, the person elected as the President shall have power to issue a proclamation for the holding of the first session of the National Assembly immediately after his being sworn in, or for its dissolution as provided in this section”.
“Going by the foregoing provision of the Constitution, there is no way the President could justifiably, legally and morally elevate partisan or party issues over and above national assignment he had directly carried out under Section 64 of the Constitution.
“APC members were indeed very lucky that PDP, which had 49 Senators present and voting, did not pull a fast one on them by putting forward one of them for election as Senate President. They would have got the plum number three position in Nigeria. Former Senate President, David Mark, had insisted he did not covet the position. If he did, he would have won hands down. The attendant uproar would have been more thunderous, having an opposition minority Senate President, with a majority ruling party Deputy! Nigeria missed an interesting piece of history”.
The above scenario would not have been unprecedented though, considering the fact that John Boehner, a Republican, representing Ohio’s 8th Congressional District, is today the Speaker of the US Congress, in a country where Barack Obama of the Democratic Party, is President. The Democrats control the Executive, while the Republicans control the Legislature. The beauty and colour of democracy”.
APC’S RE-ENACTMENT OF PAST ERRORS
You see, I write for history and posterity from a non-partisan perspective. What I warned against in 2015 is about to repeat itself. If the APC is not careful, its aggrieved members will team up with the elected Senators of the main opposition party, PDP, and elect a PDP Senator as Senate president, or at worst, Deputy Senate president. If APC arrogantly insists on Ahmed Lawan and tell Ali Ndume and Danjuma Goje to go to hell, all that any of these equally powerful politicians need do is to rein in their numerous followers and add to the block vote of aggrieved PDP Senators, and bam, that person becomes Senate President. Don’t forget that as at today, the APC has 62 elected Senators, only 22 more than PDP, which has 40 Senators. YYP has one Senator. This is excluding yet undeclared Rivers State results in which PDP will likely comfortably take the available three Senate seats. In the House, APC has 214 Members, 100 more than PDP which has 114 members, minus Rivers State. How can any sane party ignore such a formidable opposition that is in the strongest position to decide, even dictate, any matter that comes up on the floor, either of the red Chambers, or of the Senate or the green Chambers House of Representatives?
– Ozekhome is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN)
