The Eagle Gate

Tag: Senate President

  • CAN A MEMBER OF THE MINORITY PARTY LEAD THE MAJORITY AS PRESIDING OFFICER IN PARLIAMENT?

    CAN A MEMBER OF THE MINORITY PARTY LEAD THE MAJORITY AS PRESIDING OFFICER IN PARLIAMENT?

    There have been many views expressed on this topic by many. Significantly, the APC leadership has made heavy weather of the fact that this cannot be so. They have therefore called on Saraki to resign. One thing that is fundamental to Nigeria’s democracy is its very constitutional nature. There are so many threads of our national life woven neatly by the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria as amended. This is not so with the American model of presidentialism that we unnecessarily copied. We are not a union of voluntary federate states. We did not even mandate those who chose the model on our behalf to do so. More importantly , we did not write the said constitution for ourselves.

    Having said that, we are stuck with our Supreme law and anything done which is inconsistent with its provisions is certain to fail the test of the law, no matter how well intentioned. Bearing this in mind therefore, it is settled that a presiding officer of a law making body is usually elected to the the seat by a simple majority of his colleagues for different reasons. They range from party affiliation, personal friendship to perception of competence.

    Usually, Members of such bodies vote by roll call when the House first convenes. The practice is for individual members to nominate candidates of choice, but members normally vote along party lines and sometimes vote for any other candidate of their choice. In most parliaments, several parties would present candidates for the contest. The majority party normally wins, if their party members stay on line. However, an unfavored candidate within the majority party can reach a deal with other party members and still win the contest if he gets the majority of votes for that purpose on the floor of the House.

    This was precisely the scenario in the 8th Senate. Saraki had a deal with PDP and won as Senate President. This is an acceptable worldwide practice in parliament. It is not strange. A good example in the United States is the election of James Clark of the Democratic Party as Speaker of the US House of Representatives. While he served as Speaker, the Democratic Party lost the plurality or majority of seats in 1917. They no longer controlled the House. The Republicans did. Congressman Clark retained his seat as Speaker as the majority of House Members kept him there.

    Even in the Westministerial Parliamentary model where having majority in parliament is so pivotal to running government business, there are many instances where the Speaker was chosen from a minority party. In 1992, Betty Bothroyd, the first female speaker of the House of Commons in UK was a Labor MP chosen in a Conservative-controlled House of Commons.

    What then is the whole fuss for? What we need most is visionary and pragmatic leadership tailored to meet our present unenviable circumstances in the interest of rapid national development. Such leaders must fully understand Gabriel Almond’s Structural Functionalism or Easton’s System Theory in managing the component parts of Nigetia and the various arms of government for the good of all.

    Dr. Ehiogie West-Idahosa
    Former member of House of Representatives, Lawyer and Policy Expert

  • Saraki/Ekweremadu’s Failed Removal: How APC Lost its Argument Morally & Constitutionally

    Saraki/Ekweremadu’s Failed Removal: How APC Lost its Argument Morally & Constitutionally

    By Chidiebere Nwobodo

    Having failed repeatedly to effect leadership change in the Senate via unconstitutional means, embittered ex-wife called APC has resorted to blatant blackmail and mudslinging in its renewed quest to oust Senate president Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu from their coveted seats. The more they attack the duo, the clearer it becomes to Nigerians that we have a government run by tyrants, who does not give a freaking damn about survival of our hard-earned democracy. These anti-democratic forces are hell bent on setting Nigeria ablaze, just to have their way. I think the time has come to cage this beast and small tyrant called Oshiomhole; enough of his excesses cum impunity.

    Section 52 of Nigeria’s constitution made it crystal clear that for a presiding officer of the senate like senate president or his deputy, to be removed from office, you need nothing less than two third majority of senators. In a Red Chamber of 109 senators, the 2/3 majority is 73 senators! The mind-boggling questions racing through the minds of discerning Nigerians are: can those tyrants in Presidential Villa and their foot-soldiers in the senate muster 73 senators to remove Senate President Saraki and his deputy, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu? Can they infiltrate the impregnable support base of current senate leadership? Can’t they accept the stark reality that they have been outfoxed in this political game of thrones once and for all? Is it too late in the day to give peace a chance, at least for the sake of impoverished Nigerians, that are desperately yearning for the “change” promised them over three years ago?

    President Buhari and his mindless cabal, should be told categorically that they have lost this argument both in the eyes of the law and court of public opinion. They have also lost the moral aspect of the argument. For supporting Hon. Aminu Tambuwal to retain his seat as speaker of House of Representatives, having defected from PDP to APC in 2014, APC and its herd of zombies, masquerading as supporters, have lost the moral ground on which to demand Saraki’s resignation, using the benchmark of morality.

    The APC should better wake up from its hallucination that Saraki and Ekweremadu will be removed “by all means” as leaders of senate. Saraki is not carrying any moral burden as senate president, because APC never supported him to emerge in the first place. Power-drunk APC leaders cannot take back what they did not give in the first place. Nigerian constitution never implied that senate president or his deputy MUST come from majority party (if APC is still majority). Saraki/Ekweremadu senate presidency has come to stay till June, 2019.

    Any unconstitutional attempt to effect change of senate leadership, will be tantamount to toppling Nigeria democracy. President Buhari’s name will be written boldly in the hall of SHAME if he watch his party chairman, aides and conscienceless supporters push Nigeria down the deepest valley of anarchy and political turmoil. Oshiomhole and his fellow desperados in the APC, should know that Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu have become the rallying pillars and formidable shield to roll back the forces of fascism and dictatorship, of which President Buhari’s government has metamorphosed into. Nigerians are solidly behind them as commanders leading the army of democrats, against rampaging chariots and soldiers of tyranny, as we head into 2019 general elections.

  • Press Release: Response to Adams Oshiomhole

    Press Release: Response to Adams Oshiomhole

    Press Release
    August 10, 2018

    Response to Adams Oshiomhole

    1. It is rather surprising that Mr. Adams Oshiomhole is behaving like a rain-beaten chicken, crying all over the place about Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, as if the Senate President is the apparition haunting his life and the sinking ship that he captains.

    2. Having decided not to join the pigs in rolling in the dirt; we would not like to be involved in any meaningless exchange with the demagogue now in charge of APC. However, because he claimed that he was reacting to the issues raised by the Senate President during his World Press Conference, we thought it necessary to give the APC chairman some attention.

    Alas, we found that instead of addressing any issue raised by the Senate President, his press conference merely showcased his obsession and those of his sponsors with Saraki’s removal, which he did without any decorum befitting of his age or his awarded office. He brimmed with hate, hurled abuses, threw tantrums, told lies, huffed and puffed. In the end, he said nothing.

    3. It is indeed amazing that the same Oshiomhole, who is now describing Saraki as a politician of no consequence was the same one who only a few months ago was crawling all over the place pleading for Saraki’s support to become chairman. We are sure that those who took him to Saraki several times to plead his case must now be thoroughly embarrassed by his reckless and uncouth manner.

    4. By his conduct and utterances, Oshiomhole, who accused Saraki of not acting in national interest needs to do more to convince Nigerians that his desperate desire to become party chairman is not simply to feed his over-sized ego.

    5. The position of Oshiomhole and his cohorts in the APC that the Senate President must resign is a mere wishful thinking. They will continue to dream about their planned removal of the Senate President. They will need 73 Senators to lawfully remove Dr. Saraki and they will never get that in the present eight Senate.

    6. The argument of APC that the Senate President must come from a majority party; that the Senate Presidency is their crown and National Assembly is their palace is only supported by ignorance and dangerous delusion. First, the issue of which party is in the majority will only be resolved when the Senate resume. Two, Section 50 (1) (a) of the constitution is clear that any Senator can be elected as Senate President. If the only thing left of the APC change agenda is to change the Senate President we can only wish them good luck.

    7. Perhaps, Mr. Oshiomhole needs to be better educated about our parliamentary history when he Stated that “For the first time in parliamentary history in Nigeria, we had a situation where the APC had majority of Senators and went on to elect a PDP as Deputy Senate President”. Where is Mr. Oshiomhole when Senator John Wash Pam of the Nigerian People’s Party (NPP) became Deputy Senate President in the Second Republic even when the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had the majority. The same thing happened in the House of Representatives when NPP’s Rt. Hon. Edwin Umeh Ezeoke was elected Speaker in an NPN majority House. But then, it would require a level of education to understand these things.

    8. What hypocrisy! To think that this same APC were jubilating when Rt. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal retained his position after he defected from the PDP and still retained his seat, even when his new party was in the minority. These are people whose standards of morality are infinitely elastic.

    9. We are sure the remaining APC Senators need to do a lot of work to bring Oshiomhole up to speed about parliamentary practice. His ignorance are too clear in his comments about how the Senate was adjourned on July 24, 2018, the distribution of committee chairmanship in the Senate and the difference between the post of Senate President and Minority Leader.

    10. He has made so much song and dance about Mr. Godswill Akpabio resigning as Senate Minority Leader when he left the PDP to join APC. For this, Akpabio has become his hero and a symbol of honor. He obviously does not understand that the post of Minority Leader is a strictly party affair. And the PDP simply decided who to give it as it is not even a position that was mentioned in the constitution. Whereas, the Senate President position is a constitutional creation, which required majority votes of all the members. Again, we don’t expect people whose only experience in politics is at the provincial levels to understand this. No wonder they are talking of crowns and inheritance.

    11. The fair distribution of the Committee chairmanship is one of the stabilizing factors in the 8th Senate and has helped it in achieving more than all its predecessors.

    12. We need to inform this divisive element who now leads APC that if he wants to know why the 2018 budget was delayed, he should ask the heads of the MDAs. We reckon that should be easy for him since he is now their ‘headmaster’, moving around with canes to whip ministers into line.

    13. Oshiomhole once again demonstrated his lack of sense of history by talking of Buhari winning more votes in Kwara than Saraki. We are sure President Buhari himself will disagree with the APC chairman. We invite the APC chairman to look at the figures of votes secured by the President in 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015 to know that the difference is clear, like a commercial advert stated.

    14. We hereby assure this garrulous, tactless and reckless APC chairman that a million of Adams Oshiomhole cannot remove Saraki as Senate President. His illegal plots, can only feed his insatiable ego and keep him awake at nights. But it will remain an exercise in futility.

    Signed

    Yusuph Olaniyonu
    Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Senate President