The way it is

A couple of weeks ago, the Lower House of the National Assembly, the House of Representatives, witnessed a despicable trial of strength in which most of the 'honourable' members freely engaged in brazen fisticuffs, tearing their dresses to smithereens, scratching their faces with their fingernails, pushing and shoving themselves menacingly and howling like outlawed waifs and strays. Overtly misogynous but covert victims of satyriasis, the uncouth lawmakers, shrieking maniacal invective at their opponents, indecently pushed out a female lawmaker in the full glare of about seventy-five young and impressionable school children, all in their formative years.

Involved in the affray were the conservative members of the House, who threw their collective weight behind the leadership of the House, which was accused of being involved in a N9 billion scam, on the one hand, and about eleven progressives, who blew the whistle, on the other. Talk about the validity of the hackneyed aphorism that the minority should have their say and the majority to have their way! In our great House of Reps, the majority characteristically plump for the concealment of graft, perpetrated in the House by fellow 'honourable' members, whilst the minority angle for its exposure and insist on an augmenting crusade against the eternal cupidity and cruelty of man. It is a House where the reputed lawmakers blot their collective copybook by paying lip-service to the great doctrine of fair hearing and summoning ministers and directors-general of Federal parastatals for pyrotechnical questioning on matters for which they (the lawmakers) would have been convicted and sent to prison yards if they were not members of the hallowed Chambers.

At the end of the macabre-dance, an overwhelming majority of the 360-member House, with no regard to the provisions of the Constitution, read certain incomprehensible things from their House Rules and pronounced the eleven Progressives suspended “for rest of the session”, that is, till May, 2011, when their terms of office would expired!

Section 1 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 provides that “This Constitution is supreme and its provisions shall have binding force on all authorities and persons throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria.” According to subsection (3) thereof, “If any other law is inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution, this Constitution shall prevail, and that other law shall to the extent of the inconsistency be void.” Section 68 (1) (a)-(h) provides for situations that may vitiate a lawmaker's membership of the National Assembly: if he becomes a member of another legislative house; if any circumstance arises which, if he were not a member of the Senate or House of Representatives, would have disqualified him/her for election as a member; if he decides to hold any post in the public service, such as President, Vice-President, Governor, Deputy Governor, minister, commissioner, etc.; if he absents himself/herself from meetings of the House of which he is a member without just cause 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; or, being a person whose election was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiry of the period for which that House was elected. Section 69 of the Constitution also provides for the recall, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, of a lawmaker, by his constituents; not by fellow lawmakers, fighting for the apotheosis of the self-serving “internal mechanisms” designed to cover up rank misfeasance and malfeasance in the House of Commotion.

Aside from the said provisions of sections 68 and 69 of the Constitution, which could vitiate a lawmaker's membership of the National Assembly, no other law or authority empowers any person or group of persons with the right to inflict what amounts to a constructive dismissal on any lawmaker, who was duly elected to represent his/her constituents in the National Assembly for a period of four years certain.

Section 60 of the Constitution stipulates that “the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall have power to regulate its own procedure including the procedure for summoning and recess of the House.” This stipulation is, however, “subject to the provisions of this Constitution.” Accordingly, to construe the provision of the said section 60 to include powers to “terminate” the appointment of a fellow legislator, which his suspension for a whole legislative year represents, is to stand all canons of statutory interpretation on their heads! And to cite the so-called House Rules as providing the authority for such an incautious action, which is patently ultra vires the House of Representatives, is to be oblivious of the provisions of section 1 (1) (3) of the 1999 Constitution (supra).

Section 63 of the Constitution requires each House of the National Assembly, and thus every legislator, subject to the vitiating provisions of sections 68 and 69 of the Constitution, to sit for at least one hundred and eighty-one days in a year. To wilfully prevent any legislator from discharging his/her constitutional duty to his/her constituents for a whole year in the absence of the events delineated in the foregoing sections, is tantamount to a flagrant breach the Constitution and an infringement on the affected lawmaker's and his/her constituents' fundamental human and constitutional rights: The legislator is denied his contributions to debates on regional and national issues and is bereft of his emolument as a legislator, whilst his constituents (in federal constituencies) are denied representation at the national level and, therefore, technically disenfranchised while the unconstitutional suspension lasts.

That the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. 'Dimeji Bankole, against whom the “Progressives” levelled the criminal charges, presided over the “trial” and “conviction” of his accusers rankles and leaves a sour taste in the mouth. The hackneyed Latin maxim, Nemo debet esse judex in propria causa (No person should a judge in his own cause) remains valid in all common law jurisdictions (for which see Dimes vs. Grand Junction Canal (1852) 3 HL 759, and R. vs. Barnsley Metropolitan BC ex p. Hook (1976) 3 All AER452.

It is equally nauseating that it is the eleven progressive whistle-blowers who now bear the brunt of the accusations levelled against the leadership of the House. The Economic and other Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Related Offences Commission (ICPC) now lie supine in the face of all this and the accused are still being chauffeur-driven freely on our streets and “making laws” for the rest us because, according to Anacharsis, an ancient philosopher, “the laws are like a cobweb, strong enough to detain the weak and too weak to hold the strong…”

Effective immediately, the majority in the House of Reps should recall all the eleven suspended members, headed by Hon. Dino Melaye, and allow the anti-corruption agencies to unravel the N9 billion scam. The N628 million scandal that cost Hon. (Mrs.) Patricia Etteh the speakership of the House of Representatives a couple of years ago was a mere flea-bite on the kernel of this burning shame of N9 billion allegation. Additionally, the House, both as individuals and as a collectivity, should apologise unreservedly to Nigerians for their uncouth behaviour and for embarrassing, and showing bad example to, those 75 pupils who had gone to the House to witness how the nation is governed. Speaker Bankole's “apology” to the children is inadequate and ineffectual as it is incapable of extricating them from the trammels of the psychological trauma which the impressionable pupils doubtless sustained.