Edo Assembly crisis

The issue revolves around whether elected officials can switch party platforms without losing their seats. It is a controversial one which the National Assembly is also currently grappling with. With no clear guidance from the Constitution and the Electoral Act, it has been a subject of frequent litigation but no definitive settlement. What motivates elected legislators, […]

The issue revolves around whether elected officials can switch party platforms without losing their seats. It is a controversial one which the National Assembly is also currently grappling with. With no clear guidance from the Constitution and the Electoral Act, it has been a subject of frequent litigation but no definitive settlement.
 What motivates elected legislators, for instance, to dump Party A for Party B or vice versa may vary. In the case of Edo State, Governor Adams Oshiomhole alleged that a handful of the members of the state legislature who left the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) for the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) did so because they were given financial inducements. The PDP denied it had a hand in the matter, which the APC saw as a prelude to dilute its majority position in the legislature.  Matters came to a head when the membership of the legislature of the four members involved was suspended. Thereafter, four other PDP members of the House were joined by their defecting colleagues to allegedly break into the premises and hold a parallel sitting, and claimed afterwards that they had suspended both the Speaker and Majority leader of the House. They named the Deputy Speaker, who was earlier suspended by the Assembly, as their speaker.  What followed was an orgy of violence that has led to the destruction of public property. The High Court in Benin issued a restraining order on the four suspended legislators from gaining entrance into the premises of the Assembly or the legislators’ quarters. The court also restrained both the top police officer in the zone and the Commissioner of Police in the state from interfering with the proceedings and other functions of the legislature. The apparent refusal to abide by these orders only added to the rising political temperature in Edo State, with the legislators involved insisting that they had the right to switch parties and also keep their seats.
The Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, recently asserted that it was ‘right’ that elected officers should vacate their seats if they decide to leave the party under which they were elected to join another one; many people agree with that view. However this is an expression of opinion, with no legal force. And the courts will not be in a position to resolve the issue; the absence of legal guidance gives judges ample room to grant ex-parte injunctions and restraining orders that only add to the muddle.  They grant such prayers on the basis of which litigants approached the courts first.  It would appear from recent experience that defecting from one party to another is acceptable or not depending on whether or not it serves the political interests of the parties involved. This ambiguity has caused confusion and political mayhem. The time to address it is now. The issue should transcend the moral; it should be grounded purely on sound legal reasoning.  The standing committees of both houses of the National Assembly dealing with amendments to the Constitution should consider the matter one of their priorities in their next assignment, namely to propose a definitive clause that clarifies the position of elected officials who change parties while holding office.