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A Legal Practitioner, Victor Odjemu, believes that the position of the court would change on the case of House of Reps. Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal’s defection when it resumes hearing on Friday, November 7.
This was in reaction to a Federal High Court ruling on Monday that the status quo in the House of Representatives should be maintained, with Aminu Tambuwal still Speaker.
The court also ruled that the Speaker could not be removed and that the House could not reconvene until the December 3 date agreed on the floor of the House.
Mr Odjemu, Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily, said that a court cannot determine when the House would sit, adjourn or reconvene, as Section 60 of the Nigerian Constitution was clear about the House alone having the power to make such decisions.
Hearing on the substantive case was fixed to resume on Friday and the lawyer maintained that this would provide the court the opportunity to hear the argument of the other party in the lawsuit and he expects this to change the direction of the matter.
He stated that the Nigerian Constitution was also clear on the matter of defection from one party to the other. “If there’s a division recognized by law in your party then you can move.
“These things are meant to operate automatically,” he added, maintaining that the Speaker should automatically lose his membership of the House of Representatives on the basis of his defection from the PDP to the APC.
He also explained the seeming contradiction between the Federal High Courts in Abuja and Ilorin on the issue of division between a political party.
He said that the constitutional provision is that the division in a party that could warrant defection must be at the national level and not an internal crisis at state levels.
He added, however, that “one of the reasons why politicians feel free to contravene the position of the constitution is because they hide behind the delays that are prevalent in the courts” as the matter of interpreting the constitution on matters like this could be done on daily basis.
Tambuwal Smarter Than PDP Lawmakers
Another Legal Practitioner, Bimpe Otutuloro, however, disagreed with the views expressed by his colleague.
Although he was cautious as the case was still in court, he said that he believes that the Speaker had a case as one cannot really say that the PDP has no faction, arguing that Section 60 of the Nigerian Constitution should not be enforced in isolation of the clauses attached to it.
He noted that the issue of Tambuwal losing his seat has only joined a number of unresolved similar cases in the courts.
Mr Otutuloro also maintained that after the House has been adjourned, leaders of the parties in the House must come to an agreement with the approval of the Speaker for it to reconvene and anything outside of this would be illegal.
He said that Tambuwal has shown that he is very smart and indeed smarter than most of the PDP members in the House of Representatives.
He recalled that the decision of the Speaker to defect was announced after the motion for adjournment had been raised by the majority leader of the House, explaining that the Speaker waited for the motion to adjourn to be raised in order to forestall their possible counter motion.
The PDP lawmakers did not see the Speaker’s move coming, according to the lawyer, “When the majority leader moved the motion that the House should adjourn till the 3rd of December, they were thinking of forestalling that announcement, but cleverly and smartly under that motion, the Speaker brought in his defection notice.”
He further said, “If the PDP legislators had been properly schooled in the business of running the House and not just chasing money and oversight functions here and there… they would have realized that they could come under observation.”
The lawyer believes that stopping Tambuwal’s announcement could have come under an observation before the Speaker hit the gavel and brought the House proceedings to a close but they failed to do this because they were not prepared despite having known that the defection plan existed.
Although, he refused to rule out a possible connivance with some PDP lawmakers, he credited the Speaker for being a smart lawyer who must have envisaged these actions and consulted with other members to execute his plan.
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