Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - POLITICS 101: WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IN A NUTSHELL

Salimonu Kadiri:

According to our 1999 Constitution:  

QUOTE. 

Section 109. (1) A member of a House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if –

(a)   he becomes a member of another legislative house;

(b)   any other circumstances arise that, if he were not a member of that House, would cause him to be disqualified for election as such 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 Assembly 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 of Assembly 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 Speaker of the House of Assembly receives a certificate under the hand of the               Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission stating that the provisions of section 110 of this Constitution have been complied with in respect of the recall of the member.

(2)      The Speaker of the House of Assembly shall give effect to subsection (1) of this section, so however that the Speaker or a member shall first present evidence satisfactory to the House that any of the provisions of that subsection has become applicable in respect of the member.

(3)      A member of a House of Assembly shall be deemed to be absent without just cause from a meeting of the House of Assembly 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.

UNQUOTE. 

The same condition of Subsection 1(g) above  applies to all legislators in Nigeria.  

Now only Nigeria's legislative cookery has made defections sustained in Nigeria so far, because they have all been illegal. Let the truth be told about defections. There is NO LOOPHOLE in our Constitution, just loopholes in our ethics.We Nigerians are too disposed to cookery if given a peephole, we call it a loophole, and drive a Mack truck through it.   Defection while retaining your seat as so far practiced  is outright brigandage which was allowed first by the Majority Party PDP when such defections  first started, and then when the PDP  too began to suffer from defections, they could not stop them because it would be sheer hypocrisy and double standard. 

A calm reading of above shows that you can only retain your seat in a different political party legally only  if THAT  PARTY legally divides into two or more parties, and then  you choose one of those other splinter parties.  Parties are only those recognized by INEC, not entities or factions such as rAPC and nPDP, even if they put up buildings and elect officers and pretend to be for show. 

Also, you can also  only change parties from your original party at your election if and only if it was one or more parties or factions  that merged  legally (and as recognized by INEC) - after you have been elected - to form the new party.  

 So jumping from an existing undivided  party (APC or PDP respectively ) to another existing unmerged party (PDP or APC respectively ) does not pass constitutional muster.   

Consequently, all the defections in Nigeria since 1999 have been illegal.  So whether it is Saraki, or Akpabio, or all these defecting characters, their defections while retaining their elected seats - not just their offices since being seated in Senate - are illegal.  Period.

In the amended Constitution which was torpedoed due to OBJ's aborted Third Term Agenda, defection by any form was specifically outlawed.  All those division and merger issues were dropped.   These continued defections are therefore one more outfall of OBJ's failed Third Term Agenda. 

There is also this fundamental issue of party membership.  What does it really mean in Nigeria?  Are you a member of a political party because you say so, or because you apply for membership, get accepted and are issued a party card, and support the party in cash and/or in kind?  When you quit a party, do you then give a notice of quitting, and hand in your party card?   Then can you be a member of more than one political party at the same time?   For example, can Saraki be a member of APC at 12 noon, then at 1 pm be a member of PDP just at his say so?  In the twinkle of an eye, can the Senate Leader of the Majority Party become the Minority Leader - clinging to the Senate Presidency - while the Minority Leader might soon be the Majority Leader?  All without any intervening new elections?.   

Wonderful... Only in Nigeria!  What kind of potemkin democracy is that?  These are the larger questions in this theater of the absurd that we. are all  witnessing, where the hapless audience are part of the Machievialian  play,  of the Oppressed watching their Oppressors, and cheering for ethnic or religious reasons, or out of pure ignorance. 

It is bizarre.

And there you have it. 

Bolaji Aluko 

On Wednesday, August 8, 2018, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:

This is a diversionary cramp by Barrister Kennedy Emetulu in defence of political defectors in Nigeria. Whenever professional word twister Nigerians want to be mischievous, they pretend not only to have one eye but that the one eye is placed at the back of their head, always looking at the wrong direction. Oshiomhole does not need to establish party supremacy in APC since Section 68 (1) (g) and Section 65 (2b) of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria have already settled that. It was Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara who on June 8, 2015  contested for the post of President of the Senate and Speaker of the House respectively against the wish of the APC party that controlled majority in the National Assembly. What Saraki and Dogara did was anti-party and they ought to have been expelled immediately from APC. Such action would have resulted in losing their seats because they longer belonged to the party on which platform they were elected. Saraki and all the carpet crossers have criminally defrauded the Nigerian electorates of their votes and APC of  their mandates. What Buhari and APC should do is to retrieve their mandates back by force and let the criminals who have no respect for the Constitution of Nigeria by their defections go to court. The APC should mobilize their grassroot members for protests to pre-empt any possible dubious judgments from corrupt judges. Saraki and other defectors are not democrats and they should not be treated as such. It will eventually come out that now sacked DG of DSS, Lawal Daura has conspired with Bukola Saraki to stage-manage the invasion of the National Assembly so as to prevent the coming use of force to eject carpet crossers from the House. Lawal Daura has always seen himself as the de facto President. We have to remember that Daura and Saraki collaborated to see to it that Ibrahim Magu was never confirmed as the EFCC Chairman, despite being recommended by Buhari not once but twice.  Lawal Daura wrote twice to the Senate that the nominee of his boss, Magu should not be approved by the Senate. and so it is till date.

S. Kadiri

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Från: 'Kennedy Emetulu' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Skickat: den 8 augusti 2018 12:38
Till: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - POLITICS 101: WHAT HAPPENED TODAY IN A NUTSHELL

 

…

(1) Tinubu had schemed to make Oshiomhole the APC Chairman. They happily kicked Oyegun out and put him there.

(2) Oshiomhole took to the job aggressively with the aim of establishing party supremacy over everybody in government except the President. It was clear that he was going to attempt to use his position as party Chairman to grab governmental power. He began fighting everyone in sight while pictured repeatedly with Buhari to indicate he has a blank cheque from Aso Rock.

(3) He started by attacking Dr Chris Ngige and Hadi Sirika over some boards' appointments in their ministries, declaring that if the President allows indiscipline and insubordination, he won't tolerate it. He gave them a 7-day ultimatum and threatened to expel them from the party. In other words, he was trying to establish himself as a co-head of government with the President by virtue of being APC Chairman.

(4) He also thought with his arrival, he would be able to stop the impending defection of some APC lawmakers and governors to the PDP. He couldn't stop them and that dented his ego considerably. His reaction was to begin to hit out at all the defectors, talking volubly and contradictorily, but still meeting the President daily to scheme on what to do next.

(5) He began to plan with APC National Assembly members on a plot to remove Saraki and Dogara. This plan was afoot when the President travelled to London. 

(6) As part of the plan, yesterday night, Oshiomhole met with 30 APC National Assembly members and the DSS chief, Daura to plan the crude removal of Saraki and Dogara today. Oshiomhole was planning to impress the President by presenting a 'victory' over Saraki and Dogara to him on his return. He told Daura he would be calling the President once the show was on to know who he'd want as Senate President. It is not clear if the President knew the detail of what Oshiomhole and Daura were doing, but he sure has given Oshiomhole the impression that he can do anything to protect his interest and the interest of the party. 

(7) Oshiomhole felt he could use Daura for the purpose because he is the President's relation and kinsman who is more or less a law unto himself in the administration. He felt the DSS can carry out this action without any order from the Acting President who he kept out of the picture. In his calculation, the Acting President is not a problem. Again, whether the President knew this or not is unclear; but it's obvious that the Acting President was not aware.

(8) But, the PDP legislators got wind of the plan and decided to get to the National Assembly to forestall any plan to crudely remove their leadership. They got there early while the APC legislators were holed up somewhere supposedly at a caucus meeting from where they were to move en masse to the National Assembly once secured by the DSS. The idea was to swoop on the leadership at 12:00 midday when they were supposed to be at the meeting Saraki called for today and effect their plan. But, the PDP Senators were already there early calling attention to what was happening, even as they were refused entry by the DSS. At this point, the APC plotters knew they'd been rumbled. They kept away knowing now the plan had been foiled.

(9) An alarmed Osinbajo was watching all this like the rest of Nigeria on TV. He had a call from Tinubu who wanted to know if he gave the order for the DSS to blockade the National Assembly. He said he didn't. Tinubu let him know that the world isn't happy with what they're seeing and that if they are going to lose the election, this would be that moment things turned against them. On Tinubu's advice, the Vice President called Daura and the IGP to a meeting to find out what was going on. The IGP said his men were not part of the blockade at the National Assembly and Daura said he acted on the order of the APC Chairman and the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari. 

(10) Whether the Vice President sacked Daura after consultation with the President is not clear. But what is clear is that he did it knowing that it was the most obvious damage control measure to take considering the national and international uproar the incident had generated. At any rate, Tinubu and Osinbajo know that the President cannot reverse the decision to sack Daura because he needs Tinubu to stand any chance of winning the 2019 election. Buhari cannot therefore afford to annoy him now. Tinubu and Osinbajo were also confident that they could convince him it's in their interest for Daura to be the fall guy following the national and international uproar.

(11) There is nothing in all this that indicates the President does not know what happened with the deployment of the DSS to the National Assembly. What is obvious is that he has been working closely with Oshiomhole, Kyari, Daura, Idris and Baru of NNPC on a plan to remove Saraki and Dogara before he left for London.

(12) What is now clear is that this is the beginning of a fight between Oshiomhole and Osinbajo with the latter backed by Tinubu who must now be having a buyer's remorse over his support for Oshiomhole for the party chairmanship. The President is caught in their middle. Whether he knew or didn't know of Daura's sack before it happened, he can't reverse it now because he knows how costly that would be for him politically. What we have now is a divided government, a government run by cartels. Something must give. The ants that will eat up the APC are embedded inside the APC now. What we will see from now till election day in 2019 will not be for the fainthearted. Hurricane Oshiomhole is here to help bury the APC. They happily sowed the wind and now they must reap the whirlwind!

(Kenn grabs three sacks of popcorn and seven barrels of Coke!) 

Siddon Look na dog name for my village….

…..

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