A United Kingdom-based Nigerian lawyer, Mr. Olufemi Aina, has advocated a piece of legislation to tackle defections in the National Assembly.
Aina, who is a principal partner at Lagos-based John and Co and a senatorial aspirant of Ogun West in the 2019 elections, said the proposed law should borrow from the UK’s Recall of MPs Act 2015.
Speaking on the recent mass defections in the National Assembly and discourse surrounding whether or not the seats of the defectors should become vacant, the legal practitioner noted that it was important for Nigerians to have a recall act.
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He said, “This problem about whether a seat becomes vacant or not keeps recurring around every election and it has got to a stage that we need to nip it in the bud or stem the tide by enacting a law, which we will call a Recall Act.
“This will mirror what we call the Recall (of MPs) Act 2015 in the UK and it will list out circumstances in which a seat will become vacant – when a senator defects, when a senator is convicted of a criminal offence, or when the electorate will have the right to recall a senator for loss of confidence.
“That will require an amendment to Section 68(1)(b) and Section 69 of the constitution and, by extension, we will need to amend Section 116 of the Electoral Act. If we have such a recall act, it will spell out the procedures to follow.”
According to Aina, some members of parliament in the UK were caught in the “expenses scandal.”
He added, “They (citizens) said, ‘Some of you can no longer be in parliament because of this incident’. So, one of the members moved a bill that ‘let us have a recall act that will deal with it’.
“Take, for instance, former Governor Joshua Dariye (of Plateau State) who was sentenced recently to 14 years imprisonment. Despite that, his seat in the Senate is still there.
“If we have a recall act, that will spell out that once a member of parliament or any of the senators is convicted and sentenced to a period of imprisonment of more than 12 months, his seat will become automatically vacant.
“On this issue of whether when people defect from one political party to the other and whether their seat becomes vacant or not, the recall act will spell out the procedure and such circumstances.”
The lawyer also faulted the provision for a simple majority in the process of a recall of a senator according to Section 69 of the Nigerian constitution, adding that the quorum for recall should be reduced to 10 per cent.
Aina added, “When you defect, it is a loss of the people’s mandate and the moment you defect, the recall act will spell it out that at that particular moment, you need to go back to the electorate to decide. If you are a senator (or House of Representatives member) of Nigeria, you have the people’s mandate under a particular political party.
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“The moment you leave that party to another party, the electorate must have a say on whether they still want you as their senator (House of Representatives member) under the new party or not.
“If we have a recall act like we have in the UK that will spell all this out, that will address all the issues and there won’t be all these arguments here and there.”
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