Last week witnessed a bizarre political drama in Bayelsa, home state of President Goodluck Jonathan. At a lavish ceremony, some lawmakers defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to join the All Progressives Congress (APC) whose candidate, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), recently won the presidential election. The defecting lawmakers include Senator Clever Iki¬sikpo (Bayelsa East Sena¬torial District); Mr. Nadu Karibo, House of Repre¬sentatives member for Ogbia federal constituency and Mr. Azibola Omekwe, rep¬resenting Ogbia constitu¬ency at the state House of Assembly.
It tells a compelling story of Nigerian politics that the lawmakers concerned represent the outgoing president in the federal and state legislatures but their reason for the decision smacks of cheap politics. Incidentally, prior to his election to the Senate, Ikisikpo had at various times since 1999 been in the Bayelsa State House of Assembly and the House of Repre¬sentatives under the platform of the PDP that he has now discarded. He claimed that he and his colleagues were defecting to the APC to ensure that the state did not miss out in the direction the na¬tion was going.
While we condemn the crass opportunism that informed most of the defections across political parties in our country, we need to remind our politicians of a recent Supreme Court judgment that many of them seem not to be paying attention to even though it may ultimately be to their chagrin.
Ruling on the appeal filed by Hon. Ifedayo Sunday Abegunde (elected to represent the Akure North/South Federal constituency in the House of Representatives on the platform of Labour Party but who later defected to the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria the Supreme Court held that the member had lost his seat. The contention of the court is that the argument that the Ondo State chapter of the party had become factionalised should not be a basis to defect because that was a local issue.
The court further held that only “such factionalisation, fragmentation, splintering or division that makes it impossible or impracticable for a political party to function as such will, by virtue of the proviso to section 68 (1) (g), justify a person’s defection to another party and the retention of his seat for the unexpired term in the House. Otherwise, the defector automatically loses his seat.”
The import of the Supreme Court ruling is that members elected on the platform of a political party cannot leave to join another party without losing their seats. However, there remains a lacuna because the ruling still leaves room for those who would encourage “factionalisation” in their party in the bid to achieve a predetermined end. There is also the issue as to whether such “factionalisation” is at local or at federal level.
More unfortunate is that, as things stand today, only lawmakers are punished for abandoning the party that elected them for another party. No such punishment is extended to the members of the executive. That then explains why governors elected on the platform of a political party can abandon such platform and decamp to another without consequences. Also perhaps because of that, we have seen situations in which a majority party in the National Assembly suddenly became a minority party with the defection of many members, including the presiding officers. This is not right and cannot be allowed to continue.
Although the right to associate freely remains fundamental, defecting from a party on which platform a politician was elected to another party is morally repugnant and threatens the nation’s democracy. It is a gross abuse of trust and a cynical disrespect for the wishes of the electorate as expressed in the ballot box. And there must be a way to curb it.
