Politics
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Displeased by the recent turn of events in the polity, members of the Senate and House of Representatives have started plotting to impeach President Goodluck Jonathan. But will they Succeed?
| By Olu Ojewale | Dec. 8, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT |
MEMBERS of the National Assembly are up in arms against President Goodluck Jonathan. According to sources, members of both the Senate and House of Representatives have been gathering materials to use in their separate impeachment plans against President Jonathan.
As at press time, no fewer than 63 senators had allegedly signed up on the impeachment plan, while 215 members of the House had also reportedly signed up the impeachment register. The Senate has 109 members while the House has 360 members. In the Senate, eight members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were said to have joined their counterparts in the opposition All Progressives Congress, APC, to start the impeachment process.
According to sources at the National Assembly, the impeachment move was said to have been engineered by the police invasion of the National Assembly on Thursday, November 20, which is still generating debates across the country. But lawmakers are not limiting their allegations against the president to the police invasion alone, they are also accusing him of persistent poor implementation of national budgets, high level of corruption and disregard of the legislature at both the federal and state levels. The legislators cited the recent police invasion of Ekiti State House of Assembly as another breach of the constitution.
“The president has consistently usurped the powers of the National Assembly and it is time to put a stop to that. The constitution has granted us the powers to impeach any president that breaches the spirit and letters of the same constitution,” a senior APC Senate member was quoted as saying in the media. He said a similar process had started in the House of Representatives but declined to confirm whether the PDP members had signed the impeachment register.
The process of impeachment in the Nigerian constitution is regarded as rigorous and sometimes, cumbersome because of those who are to participate and get the impeachment papers served. The timing could also be wrong now that everyone appears to be engrossed with the forthcoming elections. But some of the aggrieved members of the National Assembly are not willing to consider that now. One of the senators said: “We know and we are prepared to show the president that we have responsibility to the people and the nation in general. We are prepared to lay the impeachment notice anytime from next week (December 3). Meetings are already being held.”
In fact, it was learnt that the impeachment consideration had been on the card since early in the month when the PDP hierarchy reneged on the agreement reached to give automatic tickets to at least 40 of its senators to contest next elections. “The truth of the matter is that the impeachment notice would have been laid if not for our colleagues in the PDP who pleaded with us to delay the process pending when the senate leadership would come up with the result of its efforts at securing automatic tickets for them. In any case, the process had started but if we submit the letter now, the signatures of the PDP senators will be there and the party might want to use that as an excuse to deny them their automatic tickets,” an APC senator said.
The renewed effort to impeach the president followed the police invasion of the National Assembly on Thursday, November 20, with aggrieved members of the House publicly vowing to impeach and remove President Jonathan from office. They accused him of being the unseen hand behind the invasion. By the end of the week, at least 110 of the 360-member House were said to have signed for the impeachment proceeding against the president.
But the PDP is not folding its hand for events to unfold. The PDP hierarchy has started reaching out to its members to jettison the move. Bethel Amadi, a senior member of the PDP, who confirmed the move, said the party caucus in the House would be mobilised to stop any impeachment move against Jonathan. “Jonathan has not committed any offence to the best of our knowledge. There is no reason to drag Mr. President into any crisis happening at the National Assembly. In any case, we (PDP) are in the majority, both in the Senate and the House. So, any talk of impeachment can only make one laugh.” Amadi said.
That notwithstanding, Femi Gbajabiamila, House minority leader, said the plot was still on track. “The PDP people have plans, we have plans. We are all planning,” he said in an interview.
Although Aminu Tambuwal, speaker of the House, was the target of the police invasion for his defection from the PDP to the APC, he was quoted to have asked his colleagues to consider the barricade of the National Assembly by the police as part of the price to pay for a sustainable democracy. It was not clear whether Tambuwal was in support of the impeachment plan.
But what is clear for now is that the PDP hierarchy, in collaboration with its allies in the National Assembly have been working round the clock to thwart the plan.
Boluwaji Kunlere, a senator from Ondo State, said impeachment was not the best option to tackle the political crisis on ground. “We should consider actions that would strengthen our democracy and not to overheat and create confusion,” he said.
Towing the same line of argument, Monday Ubani, lawyer and former chairman, Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Ikeja branch, said impeachment would cause a lot of trouble for the Nigerian politics because people from the South-South would regard it as a plot by the North to reclaim power. “I want us to thread the path of caution because this is a fragile country… If Nigerians are tired of Jonathan, they have an opportunity to vote for another person at next election,” Ubani said. Besides, he said the lawmakers might not have enough time to get the process through.
To remove President Jonathan from office through impeachment, the legislature is relying on Section 143 of the 1999 Constitution, which says: “The President or Vice-President may be removed from office in accordance with the provisions of this section whenever a notice of any allegation in writing signed by not less than one-third of the members of the National Assembly is (a) presented to the President of the Senate (b) stating that the holder of the office of President or Vice-President is guilty of gross misconduct in the performance of the functions of his office, detailed particulars of which shall be specified.”
There had been moves in the past to impeach the president. For instance, in 2013, a factional group in the PDP, which later joined the APC, had muted the idea of impeaching the president if he refused to jettison his yet to be declared aspiration to contest the 2015 presidential poll. The plan later fell through. So, had been that of 2012 when the House of Assembly accused the president of gross violation of the Appropriation Act, 2012 through selective implementation of the budget and subsequently passed a resolution mandating the minister of Finance, to stop forthwith, the violation of the 2012 Appropriation Act by releasing the funds as and when due. However, the House later dropped the plan, following the controversies and expectations that trailed the threat. Instead, the House decided to consider the reports of its various Committees before embarking on the physical inspection capital projects across the country.
Since the current civilian dispensation in 1999, impeachment threats have made at different presidents starting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. But none has succeeded except at the state level where some governors and deputy governors have been removed through impeachment. One of the governors removed through impeachment proceedings recently was Murtala Nyako of Adamawa, who was shoved out of office on July 15, this year. As the dust raised by Nyako removal from office was settling down, Sunday Onyebuchi was impeached and removed as deputy governor of Enugu State in August. Many speakers of the state House of assemblies have also lost out through impeachment processes.
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