• Senators, PDP governors to storm court in solidarity
Following the federal government’s
decision to arraign Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike
Ekweremadu, before Justice Yusuf Haliru of an Abuja High Court today for
alleged forgery of the Senate Standing Order, 2015, concern has grown
over the sanctity of the legislature to run its affairs as an
independent arm of government.
Also to be arraigned are a former
Clerk of the National Assembly, Salisu Maikasuwa, and Deputy Clerk of
the National Assembly, Benedict Efeturi. The arraignment is coming one
week after they were initially scheduled for arraignment.
The Attorney General of the Federation
(AGF) and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), last week
defended his decision to proceed with the trial, stating that he was
exercising the powers conferred on him by the constitution when he filed
a two-count charge of forgery and conspiracy to commit forgery against
Saraki and Ekweremadu.
He also said that he acted on the recommendation of the just retired Inspector General of Police (IG) Solomon Arase.
However, the arraignment has called to
question the principle of the separation of powers between the three
arms of government, which the executive has clearly chosen to ignore.
The Senate in the last two weeks had
reminded the executive that its foray into a matter that was clearly the
business of the legislature has the potential of threatening the
nation’s democracy.
Its warning, however, has been ignored
by the executive which has decided to try Saraki, Ekweremadu and two
others over the alleged forgery of the Senate rules.
The quartet would have been arraigned
last Tuesday but stayed away from the court following claims that they
had not been served with the court summons.
When the matter came up for hearing
last Tuesday, the court bailiff expressed his inability to serve the
accused persons as a result of the difficulty he encountered accessing
them.
The bailiff’s complaints compelled the
judge to give an order for substituted service. Specifically, the judge
ordered the bailiff to paste the court summons on the notice board of
the National Assembly last Tuesday, which he did.
The AGF had on Friday, June 17,
charged the accused persons to court over alleged forgery of the Senate
rules used for the conduct of June 9, 2015 elections of the Senate
President and Deputy Senate President respectively.
Order 3(3eii) of the Senate rule book
had been changed from the open ballot system to the secret balloting
system. The order was allegedly altered to hide the identities of
senators who were pretending to be in support of the candidate of their
party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), while voting for another
candidate, which they could not openly express.
The change of Order 3(3eii) was therefore allegedly done to shield them from being marked as traitors by the party leaders.
However, the recent re-opening of the
alleged forgery came almost a year after the case was investigated by an
Assistant Inspector General of Police, Dan’Azumi Job Doma following a
petition sent to the Nigeria Police by a group of senators from a
faction of the APC caucus in the parliament known as the Senate Unity
Forum.
The Forum had supported the nomination
of Senator Ahmad Lawan, the preferred candidate of the APC, for the
post of Senate President against Saraki.
After the police investigation, Doma
forwarded his findings to the Office of the AGF in July last year.
Thereafter, some senators such as Suleiman Hunkuyi (Kaduna North),
Kabiru Marafa (Zamfara Central) and Ajayi Borrofice (Ondo North) dragged
Saraki and Ekweremadu to an Abuja High Court over the alleged forgery.
But while that case was ongoing in a
court presided over by Justice Ademola Adeniyi, a Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) senator, Gilbert Nnaji (Enugu East), filed a counter suit at
a Federal High Court, citing the case of Senator Abraham Adesanya, who
had dragged his colleagues to court in 1981 over a decision reached on
the floor of the Senate.
He had prayed the court to restrain
them from going ahead with their case, noting how Adesanya’s suit was
struck out because he was said to lack the locus standi to institute the
case.
As a member of the Senate, the court
had told Adesanya that a decision taken by the majority in the chamber
could not be challenged by another member, even if he did not agree with
it.
Against this background, Justice
Gabriel Kolawole ruled on July 27, 2015, that “where the Senate had
taken a decision which did not follow its internal rules and standing
orders, the choice open to members is to get the decision reversed only
through democratic process by mobilising the majority of members to get
the decision reviewed and possibly reversed”.
Kolawole further ruled that in the
spirit of separation of powers, the judiciary as the third arm of
government would hesitate to intervene in the internal affairs of the
National Assembly unless the matter under contention goes beyond
application or misapplication of Senate rules and he gave a reason for
his ruling.
Subsequently, Kolawole struck out the
case, a situation which explained the reason for outrage in the Senate
in the last two weeks.
Senators contacted by THISDAY
yesterday to ascertain whether they will accompany their presiding
officers to court today as it has been their custom to accompany Saraki
to the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) since last year, chose to keep
mum.
But a source told THISDAY that almost
all the senators loyal to the Senate leadership would be in court this
morning. According to him, some of the PDP governors will also fly into
Abuja from their various states in expression of their solidarity with
Ekweremadu.
He said: “Almost all the
senators will go. It seems all PDP governors will be coming or least a
good number of them plan to fly in. Everyone is very bothered about the
whole rubbish,” he said.
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