The House of Representatives is headed for a constitutional crisis upon the imminent stepping down of its presiding officer, Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, one sitting day before the House attains the minimum sitting requirements in a year.
Tambuwal who was elected as governor of Sokoto State in the last governorship election, is expected to automatically step down as a member of the House, and in that regard as speaker, once he takes the oath of office as governor on May 29.
Sources in the House say that the House is expected to hold a valedictory session possibly on May 28 and subsequently adjourn sine die to await the proclamation of the next National Assembly by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari who would also have taken office as president on May 29.
The adjournment on that date would mean that the House would have fallen short of actualising the constitutional provision of sitting for 181 days in a year as stipulated in section 63 of the Constitution which states thus: The Senate and the House of Representatives shall each sit for a period of not less than one hundred and eighty-one days in a year.
The House as at its last sitting day last Thursday, had sat for 174 days and if sitting holds for all six remaining days between next Tuesday and Thursday, May 28, the House would have attained 180 days, one day short of the constitutional provision requiring the Senate and the House of Representatives to each sit for 181 days in a year.
The seventh National Assembly was proclaimed on June 6, 2011 a day Tambuwal upset the permutations of his party to emerge as speaker of the House.
Section 64 (1) spelling out the tenure of the House states that:
The Senate and the House of Representatives shall each stand dissolved at the expiration of a period of four years commencing from the date of the first sitting of the House.
The life of the House is not expected to end until June 5, 2015, a situation that would have allowed the House to meet the constitutional requirements even with the advent of General Muhammadu Buhari as president. Buhari is expected to proclaim the 8th National Assembly after he would have been sworn in.
However, Tambuwal’s inauguration as governor of Sokoto State would mean that he would be unavailable to preside over the House as he is bound to have resigned as a member of the House once he is sworn in as governor.
Senior legislators told Saturday Vanguard that a way of beating the constitutional logjam would be to allow the deputy speaker, Chief Emeka Ihedioha or a speaker pro tempore, preside for the remaining days, but members were very unenthusiastic about that. Indeed, sources were insistent that the House would hold its valedictory session and adjourn sine die with Tambuwal on the chair in order for them to give the popular speaker a deserving send-off.
Tambuwal’s tenure as speaker of the House of Representatives has been widely praised for its lack of controversy on the part of its leadership despite a frosty relationship with the executive arm. That frostiness culminated in the withdrawal of the security aides of the speaker last November when he defected to the All Progressives Congress, APC and became the first speaker of the House of Representatives to fly the flag of a political party different from that of the incumbent president.
The discord from the withdrawal of his security aides and the police invasion of the National Assembly were yesterday being blamed for the failure of the House to realise the minimum number of days as set in the Constitution. Vanguard
