By Femi Aribisala Have you ever heard the parable of a man
who stole a goat and was arrested and
prosecuted? When brought before the judge,
his line of defense was that others had
stolen goats in the past but had not been
prosecuted. How does that absolve him of guilt? The man is a thief, pure and simple. When one talks of the treachery of Aminu
Tambuwal’s defection from the PDP to the
APC, his apologists trot out opposition-
party legislators and governors that also
defected to the PDP in the past. So what? All
such defections are equally treacherous and morally indefensible. What we have today is
the glorification of treachery for political
reasons. The honorable thing for any
defecting politician to do is to resign his or
her seat in the legislature and then seek a
fresh mandate under the new party through a by-election. Dishonourable politics.
In 1983, Abubakar Rimi resigned as
Governor of Kano State when he defected
from the Peoples’ Redemption Party, PRP,
to the Nigerian Peoples’ Party, NPP. He did
this because he was an honorable man; a true progressive. In 2014, Aminu Tambuwal
defected from the PDP to the APC but has
refused to relinquish his seat in the National
Assembly. He did this because he is not an
honorable man; neither is he a true
progressive. Tambuwal has been Speaker for four years, and yet he has not
championed one single piece of progressive
legislation in all that time. With his defection, some busybody
parliamentarians with N27.5 million to burn
bought the APC nomination papers for
Tambuwal so he can contest for the party’s
presidential ticket. Almost immediately, he
was touted as a spoiler for Muhammadu Buhari’s presidential ambition and was
shamelessly courted by the Tinubu brigade
in the APC. Realising that his hopeless
candidacy would only be used to foment
problems within the APC, Tambuwal wisely
resigned from the contest, forfeiting the millions paid. As a face-saving device to camouflage his
signaled readiness to ditch Buhari for
Tambuwal, Bola Tinubu went public to
congratulate Tambuwal for deciding not to
contest for the APC presidential nomination.
He said: “This sacrifice you have made will not be in vain. It must be noted by all
democrats across the country as an act of
great patriotism.” Police attack at National Assembly:
Lawmakers scaling gate of National
Assembly as Police blocked National
Assembly gate in Abuja. Photo by Gbemiga
Olamikan Trouble-maker Tambuwal
This is really neat. Tinubu’s definition of
patriotism applies to the APC and not to
Nigeria. Tinubu forgot to mention that while
Tambuwal decided not to cause trouble in the
APC; at the same time, he decided to be a trouble-maker at the national level. Should
this man who has the good sense to withdraw
as APC presidential candidate “as a
sacrifice for the cohesion and unity of the
APC” not also have the good sense to resign
from the National Assembly now that he has defected from the PDP for the sake of
national peace and cohesion? Apparently not! According to the godfather of the APC, a
patriot can be a trouble-maker at the national
level, as long as his trouble-making is in the
interest of the APC. That, in a nutshell, is the
crux of the problem with the APC. It is a
party of trouble-makers. The APC does not really believe it can win the 2015 elections.
Therefore, it is determined to cause as much
mayhem as possible; even threatening to
create a parallel government when and if it
loses the election. The Tambuwal saga is the latest example of
APC mischief. The party’s strategy is to
achieve power immorally and illegally. It is a
party of treacherous defectors. It even
went to Obasanjo, a former PDP president,
asking him to defect to the APC. Instead of attracting its own membership, it gathers
together a coterie of treacherous defectors.
All its presidential candidates have jumped
from party to party. It is now encouraging Tambuwal in his
treachery of attempting to defect to the
APC with the position of Speaker. However,
the APC remains a minority party in the
National Assembly. The position of Speaker
belongs to the majority party. The APC cannot receive by subterfuge what rightly
belongs to the majority PDP.
Tambuwal knows he can no longer be
Speaker. He knows that APC cannot win a
majority of the seats in the legislature in the
coming elections. He knows the mago mago he used to become the Speaker cannot be
duplicated in the next House of
Representatives. Therefore, in defeat, he
has picked up the nomination form to contest
as Governor of Sokoto under the APC ticket. Show of shame Since this is the new reality confronting
Tambuwal, the man should stop causing
trouble and simply resign his seat in the
House. But rather than resign, and with his
security detail removed, Tambuwal drove
with a convoy to the National Assembly. This led to a show of shame that was televised
and broadcast to the whole world. The fact
that Tambuwal led this brazen display of
lawlessness at the National Assembly shows
that he is unworthy of being the number four
citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Emmanuel Ojukwu, the Public Relations
Officer of the Nigeria Police, had this to say:
“The speaker came with thugs, refused to be
searched and six of the hoodlums attacked a
police man, after which the police tear-
gassed the Speaker and his riotous crowd so as to restore order. Everybody has seen that
somebody was even beating somebody;
somebody was pushing a policeman from the
car. Somebody was removing road blocks
mounted by police.” Those “somebodies” are
supposed to be Nigeria’s law-makers. In effect, championed by Tambuwal, our
law-makers became law-breakers. Impeded
by the police from entering the House, some
climbed the gate. The Speaker himself
flouted the directives of the police. He
forced his way inside. Later, in disgrace, he sent his media aide with the statement that:
“The honorable speaker wishes to state that
he is a law-abiding citizen of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria who has no immunity
against arrest and prosecution.” This is what
is called “campaigning after failure to be elected.” The video of his lawlessness had
already gone viral on the internet. Time to resign
There is nothing left for Tambuwal to do
now than to resign from the House of
Representatives and save Nigeria from all
this wahala he has created. Defecting from
one party to another is against the spirit and the letter of the Nigerian Constitution.
Section 68 (g) of the 1999 Constitution says:
“A member of the Senate or of the House of
Representatives shall vacate his seat in the
House of which he is a member if being a
person whose election to the House 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…” Tambuwal’s name did not even appear on the
ballot-paper when he was elected to the
House of Representatives from his
constituency in Sokoto. It was the PDP that
was on the ballot. That is how Rotimi
Amaechi became Governor of Rivers State. He was not even the candidate who ran for
the office. However, the courts ruled that he
should have been the PDP candidate. Since
the PDP won the election, Amaechi became
the Governor of Rivers State even though he
did not campaign in the election for the post. The only proviso in the Constitution for
Tambuwal to remain in the House is if his
defection to the APC is as a result of a
division in the PDP or the merger of the
PDP with another political party, or the
faction of another party. This situation does not exist, except in the imagination of APC
supporters. The courts in Nigeria have ruled
that the PDP is not divided and is not
bedeviled by any factions. Everyone in
Nigeria knows this in any case. Some people say it is not the business of the
executive to determine if Tambuwal should
remain as Speaker or not: it is a matter for
the courts. However, the courts don’t
execute laws: the executive does. The
Constitution says if a man defects from his elected party to another party, he
automatically loses his seat. Tambuwal
resigned; therefore he has lost his seat. The
executive has implemented that loss. If Tambuwal has a problem with that, the
onus is on him to go to court. The onus is not
on the executive. Until the courts say
otherwise, Tambuwal can no longer be a
member of the House of Representatives;
and someone who is not a member of the House cannot be the Speaker. We borrowed
our political system from the United States
where it is well understood that the Speaker
of the House cannot belong to the minority
party. Attempted coup Tambuwal, the Speaker, is APC. Emeka
Ihedioha, the Deputy Speaker, is PDP. This
situation is unacceptable, especially given
the fact that the mandate for leadership in
the House was freely given by the electorate
to the PDP and not the APC. You cannot have a situation of minority rule, when in actual
fact it is the majority that has the mandate. Indeed, at the national level, the APC is
unknown and has yet to be recognised by the
Nigerian electorate. The APC has never
presented a candidate to the electorate at
the national level. Therefore, the APC cannot
come out of nowhere to commandeer the major office of the Speaker. These
shenanigans have gone on for too long. The
APC did not win any seat whatsoever in the
House of Representatives in the 2011
elections. Therefore, it cannot provide the
Speaker of the House. Tambuwal should have known that by
resigning from the PDP while hanging on to
the position of Speaker he is bound to
generate unnecessary political tension. If he
did not know this before, he knows this now.
Failure to resign from the House now only portrays him as a troublesome opportunist.
Tambuwal needs to redeem his battered
image soonest. He should do the honorable
thing and resign from the House without
further delay.

just passing