Katsina Assembly Speaker’s sack
On Wednesday last week, 23 out of the 34 members of the Katsina State House of Assembly voted to remove their speaker Aliyu Sabi’u Muduru from office. Though all the Assembly’s members belong to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), it was evident that there was sharp division among them as 11 of them opposed […]
On Wednesday last week, 23 out of the 34 members of the Katsina State House of Assembly voted to remove their speaker Aliyu Sabi’u Muduru from office. Though all the Assembly’s members belong to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), it was evident that there was sharp division among them as 11 of them opposed the removal of Muduru, who emerged as speaker in 2015.
The Assembly members held nocturnal meetings and perfected plans for three months before they took the speaker by surprise and suddenly passed a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Muduru had called for adjournment after the day’s session but Majority Leader Hambali Faruk drew his attention “under matters of public importance,” saying House members had lost confidence in him. Deputy speaker Shehu Tafoki then took charge; the gallery was cleared of journalists and spectators and Yahaya Kusada was elected as the new speaker.
Still unknown to the public is the actual reason for this throwback to the dark days of legislative instability. Some observers said Muduru’s ouster was long overdue since his emergence as speaker in 2015 was greeted with controversy. He was believed to have had the support of godfathers who engineered the suspension of the House’s standing rules before his election. The rules provided that a freshman legislator such as Muduru should not be made the speaker, which should be reserved for more veteran MPs. However, pressures from godfathers allegedly made legislators to suspend the rules to pave the way for Muduru.
Other reports said shortly after his election, Muduru turned his back on the godfathers. They then dropped their support for him and his fellow MPs were emboldened to move against him. In removing Muduru some of his colleagues made laughable allegations. One said at 33, Muduru is an age mate of his children. Other MPs said Muduru was a stooge whose romance with the executive arm of government hampered the assembly’s powers.
We can only hope that the Katsina State Assembly will learn a lesson from its mistakes. The rule that tried to preserve leadership positions in the legislature to experienced members was a carefully thought out one and they should not have suspended it under pressure from anyone. The standing rules of a legislature as well as its traditions are quite intricate, not to mention institutional memory of how and why some things were done in previous assemblies. The shortcomings that his colleagues now came to observe in Muduru were easily attributable to his being a new comer and his general lack of familiarity with rules and traditions. As to Muduru’s age, it is true that experience and wisdom have a certain correlation with age but the members ought to have taken that into consideration at the time they were choosing their leaders.
The episode at the Katsina Assembly came barely two weeks after a similar development at the Ondo State House of Assembly where Princess Jumoke Akindele, representing Okitipupa Constituency, was removed as speaker. This led to crisis and an abrupt closure of the assembly. Our fear is that the recent episodes in Ondo and Katsina could signal a return to a bygone era of legislative instability. During the first four years of this republic [1999-2003], removal of Assembly speakers, including at the National Assembly was quite common, as was the impeachment of deputy governors.
Since then these episodes have become much less common, to the greater good of this country’s democratic experiment. We are not saying legislative leaders should not be removed if they fail to live up to the standards of excellence but it is better if MPs learn to stick to their own rules, resist political pressure from external forces and also factor in experience, ability and wisdom in choosing their leaders. Plus, they can do more with more patience.