Members of the House of Representatives asked the military to perish the thought of returning to power in Nigeria, saying coups had no place in the country’s governance.
The Deputy Speaker of the House, Mr. Yussuff Lasun, spoke their minds in Abuja on Monday at a public hearing on 12 bills to amend the Electoral Act, 2010, in a bid to strengthen democratic processes.
Lasun is also the Chairman, House Special Ad Hoc Committee on Review of the 1999 Constitution.
The Lasun committee has among others, recommended independent candidacy, financial autonomy for local governments and state Houses of Assembly to be included in the constitution ahead of the 2019 general elections.
A new constitution is expected to be in use in 2018.
Lasun said he was in shock to hear that anybody could be contemplating staging a coup in Nigeria after all the efforts made in the last 18 years to stabilise democracy in the country.
He added, “It will be difficult for the military to come back. We have had democracy for 18 years and we worked so hard to get to where we are today.
“I don’t know why some people are thinking this way (of coup) going by the comments and things we have heard in the last two weeks.”
However, the deputy speaker noted that the House was happy that the military sent its officers to the hearing on the 12 electoral bills.
Lasun added that the presence of the officers was an indication that the “military is supporting democracy and will protect it.”
The hearing was organised by the House Committee on Electoral and Political Party Matters with the support of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre and the UKaid Nigeria.
Also, a National Leader of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu; the Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Monday Ubani; and the House of Representatives, on Monday, told Nigerians to resist any attempt to remove the current democratic government in the country by force.
Also, a former governor of the old Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa, warned the military personnel against throwing the nation into turmoil in their bid to seize power.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, last week warned some Nigerians, who he did not name, to stop “approaching officers and soldiers for political reasons”, a development which people believe could be a plot to overthrow the current political dispensation in the country.
Speaking in Lagos on Monday, Tinubu warned the military to forget any attempt to lure it to stage a coup, adding that such attempt would be resisted.
Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, said this at a Special Parliamentary Session organised by the Lagos State House of Assembly to mark the Lagos at 50 celebrations.
The event was also to mark the second anniversary of the 8th Assembly.
He said, “I will like to sound a note of caution to us – the democracy that we are now trying to perfect is not guaranteed to us. We must sweat hard and think wisely if we are to keep it.
“Just a few days ago, we had a warning that some people were trying to entice the military out of the barracks. I say don’t try it. I want to add my voice to that warning. Those who think they can break the democracy so many of us laboured and for which too many people sacrificed their lives, they are mistaken.
“Nigeria has come too far for such a thing to happen. Those people behind such idea will find no fertile ground to plant their seed in Lagos. We will not buy their bad product; whatever they want to sell is a bad product and we are going to reject it”, Tinubu stated.x
