Human rights activist, Femi Falana, says members of the Rivers State House of Assembly who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC, following a protracted power tussle in 2023, have forfeited their seats.
The 25 lawmakers who defected have lost their seats. They have lost their rights to remain members of the assembly. Unless you can show and demonstrate that there is division in a political party that sponsored your election, you cannot remain in any legislative arm if you decamp to another party,” Falana said, citing extant law while featuring on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics program.
“The whole idea is that the constitution set out to ban political prostitution on the part of legislators.
“The Supreme Court made this clear in the case of Adetunde and the Labour Party, that you cannot decamp and then remain a member of a legislative house in Nigeria unless you can show that there is a division in your party.
“It doesn’t mean a division in a local government or a state. It has to be on the national level. That is the position of the court.”
The defectors are 25 members of the state assembly who are loyalists of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike.
They dumped the PDP for the APC following the face-off between the Minister and the state governor, Siminalayi Fubara.
The move had further polarized the legislative chamber into factions and the declaration of the pro-Wike lawmakers’ seats as vacant by Governor Fubara.
A peace deal brokered by President Bola Tinubu to resolve the political impasse in the state has since broken down.
Subsequently, a fresh crisis in the Assembly, last week, led to the election of Victor Oko-Jumbo as the speaker.
Oko-Jumbo who represents the Bonny constituency was elected by the lawmakers who are regarded as loyalists of Governor Fubara, and the number of persons who picked him as the speaker is unclear.
The move came after the call for the immediate removal of Governor Fubara by the state chapter of the APC.
