Fayose’s Cat and Mouse Game with Lawmakers
Olakiitan Victor, in Ado Ekiti, looks at the brewing political crisis in Ekiti State following disagreements between Governor Ayo Fayose and members of the state Assembly, which culminated in the impeachment of the speaker by seven members of the 26-membe
Under an ideal democratic situation, the executive, legislature and judiciary are supposed to synergise for the socio-economic and political wellbeing of society. But what is playing out in Ekiti State is antithetical to the ideal tenets of democracy and the rule of law.
Controversial Impeachment
On Thursday, seven of the 26 members of the Assembly convened under heavy police security and impeached the Speaker, Hon. Adewale Omirin, the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Tunji Orisalade. The seven PDP lawmakers from the Peoples Democratic Party caucus elected Hon. Dele Olugbemi as speaker and Hon. Abeni Olayinka as deputy speaker.
The impeachment has been widely condemned as illegal because only two-third majority of the Assembly of 26 members can constitutionally impeach the speaker or the deputy speaker.
But there was a preface to event of Thursday. On Monday, a battle of supremacy had started in the House of Assembly.
Seven lawmakers from the PDP caucus, out of the 26 lawmakers that make up the Assembly, sat and approved the nominees presented before them by Governor Ayodele Fayose in the absence of the Speaker, Omirin, principal officers, and other members of the Assembly.
It would be recalled that as a seeming background to the current confusion, something unusual occurred in the temple of justice, the judiciary, in the state on September 25, when some suspected political thugs invaded the Ado Ekiti High Court and beat up Justice Segun Ogunyemi. Ogunyemi was handling a case bordering on Fayose’s eligibility to stand for election during the June 21 governorship poll on account of his October 16, 2006 impeachment.
Considering the aforementioned, the sordid scenario that unfolded at the Assembly on Monday did not come as a surprise to many.
Theatre of the Absurd
Ekiti State has had ignominious political antecedents since 2003, culminating in a litany of absurdities that have tended to make the state a centre of negative precedents in the country’s political history.
In 2007, under the aborted Segun Oni administration, 13 PDP lawmakers led by the then Speaker, Hon. Femi Bamisile, sat at dawn and approved a list of commissioner nominees sent by the governor in the heat of his frosty relationship with ex-Governor Kayode Fayemi. Though, the court later invalidated the action of the lawmakers, the 2007 incident highlights the fact that Ekiti State is not alien to the present political situation.
In an act that has been vehemently and widely condemned in prodemocracy circles countrywide, the pro-Fayose lawmakers on Monday, with heavy security cover, schemed out the speaker and his deputy, Tunji Orisalade, from the obviously predetermined plenary where they took the controversial decisions. Hiding under the cover of Section 27 of the Assembly’s Standing Order, the caucus appointed a speaker plenipotentiary, Hon. Dele Olugbemi, and conducted the business of the house.
The pro tem speaker, who hit the gavel during the proceeding in a manner that tended to show naivety and unpreparedness of mind, was one of the All Progressives Congress lawmakers that defected to PDP recently.
Contentious Decisions
Not minding the untidy nature of the proceedings, the lawmakers passed all the issues brought before them by Fayose at the controversial plenary that lasted about an hour. They ratified the appointments of Mr. Owoseeni Ajayi as the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice; Mr. Kayode Oso as Commissioner for Works, and Mr. Toyin Ojo as Commissioner for Finance.
In a motion moved by the Minority Leader of the house, Hon. Samuel Ajibola, and seconded by a defector lawmaker, Mrs. Abeni Olayinka, the house also acceded to Fayose’s requests to appoint 12 special advisers and constitute caretaker chairmen to man the affairs of the local government areas of the state pending the conduct of elections at the third tier of government.
Rationalisation
The lawmakers tried to rationalise their action. Ajibola said they were protected by section 27 of the house rules. He quoted the section as follows, “In the absence of the speaker and the deputy speaker, the lawmakers can appoint a speaker pro-tempore among other members to perform the function of the speaker.”
Ajibola submitted that they had taken the steps, which he described as patriotic, in the overall interest of Ekiti State.
Denying allegations that the sitting was illegal, Ajibola said 10 members of the Assembly sat to take the decisions, adding that what the law prescribed as quorum was nine.
Question of Number
However, the exact number of lawmakers at the chamber for the plenary is still a subject of conjecture, though, the PDP has to show that 10 legislators had sat to hold the session.
But the state publicity secretary of APC, Hon. Taiwo Olatunbosun, said only seven lawmakers could be identified at the sitting. He said the propriety of the pro-Fayose lawmakers’ action now rested on their ability to defend the identities of those that sat during the proceedings.
Olatunbosun said the APC majority with 19 lawmakers was still intact and that those hired to form the quorum were mercenaries. He urged Fayose to publish the names of the lawmakers that attended the plenary to convince the doubting public.
Olatunbosun said it was an aberration to the rule of law for a group of legislators to appoint a temporary speaker without recourse to the substantive one. The APC spokesperson described the “invasion” as a coup against democracy . He added that whatever actions taken by the lawmakers and those whose appointments were ratified were a nullity in the face of the law.
Buttressing the APC position, the speaker contended that the seven PDP members who sat included the six APC members who had defected to PDP on the day of Fayose’s inauguration. He gave their names as Hon. Ajibola Samuel (Ekiti East II), Hon. Adeojo Alexander (Ekiti South West II), Hon. Adeloye Adeyinka (Ikole I), Hon. Israel Olowo Ajiboye, Hon. Fatunbi Olajide J. A. (Moba II), Hon. Olugbemi Joseph Dele (Ikole II), and Hon. Olayinka Modupe Abeni (Ado 11).
Omirin challenged the PDP to come out with a contrary list to disprove his claim.
He, however, said, “This action will not make us to work against the governor. It is by working with him that can make us guide him to sanity. We will not allow a particular individual to move the state backward. We can’t have a maximum ruler. He led some people to invade the judiciary, now he has invaded the Assembly.”
Improprieties
However, as the lawmakers were still grappling with the controversial sitting, Fayose threw another missile that further agitated the minds of the lawmakers, many of whom had before Monday fled into exile, perhaps, to avoid being attacked by thugs, when tension rose and rumour was rife that such action was on the card of the PDP.
The door leading to the office of the speaker was sealed off. Sensing where the onslaught was coming from, Omirin accused Fayose of being determined to stifle speaker’s office. He said the governor had orchestrated the seal off of the office and the sack of all his aides just to bring him down because of party differences.
Omirin said Fayose had earlier “employed threats and coercion, including freezing the accounts of the Assembly, cutting of electricity supply from the Speaker’s Lodge and stopping statutory votes for the Speaker’s upkeep and protocol to intimidate in his bid to take firm control of the house.
“Only yesterday (November 18), the governor announced the sack of the Speaker’s aides, including that of the Deputy Speaker and Majority Leader. It is believed that the Speaker’s vehicles have been demobilised because their keys have been taken to the office of the governor.”
Cautious Denial
Fayose has tried to deny the allegations against him. In a statement signed by the Secretary to the State
Government, Mrs. Modupe Alade, regarding the sacked political aides to the Speaker, the government said Fayemi had fortified the governor with powers to hire and fire political aides of the number three citizen of the state.
Fayose added that he had not taken any step that could denigrate the legislative and the judicial arms of government since assumption of office on October 16, contrary to allegations raised by the APC lawmakers.
According to Fayose, “It is another falsehood coming from a confused speaker.
However, the exact number of lawmakers at the chamber for the plenary is still a subject of conjecture, though, the PDP has to show that 10 legislators had sat to hold the session. Olatunbosun said the APC majority with 19 lawmakers was still intact and urged Fayose to publish the names of the lawmakers that attended the plenary
We all know that the governor could not have ordered that the speaker’s office be sealed off because the existence of Adewale Omirin is insignificant to us and to the people of Ekiti State having lost his honour.
“Besides that, Omirin’s driver is under the Assembly commission which could employ, promote, transfer or sack driver and other staff of the legislature. What does the happenings in the legislature or operations at the assembly by the commission got to do with Governor Fayose.”
Legal Crucible
Chairmen of Ado Ekiti and Ikere branches of the Nigeria Bar Association, Mrs. Foluke Dada and Mr. Bunmi Olugbade, respectively, said the action of the lawmakers sympathetic to Fayose would have to be subjected to judicial interpretation to test whether they have breached the law or not. Olugbade, who was a member of the Assembly between 2003 and 2007, said as a lawyer he was naturally averse to illegality, but insisted that from his findings, 10 people sat and conducted the sitting, which he said made it a regular and orderly sitting since the quorum was met, as demanded by Section 96 of the constitution.
Olugbade said, “No one can say that the sitting was illegal or that the lawmakers acted ultra vires because 10 people sat. Section 95 subsection 2 of the 1999 constitution gave the lawmakers the powers to appoint a temporary Speaker in the Assembly in case of the absence of both the speaker and his deputy, which I learnt was the case on Monday. So, the sitting was regular and constitutional.
“Apart from the quorum, the clerk of the assembly was present and the mace, which was the symbol of authority. Apart from impeachment and passage of appropriation bill, which requires two-third of the members, what the house needs to operate is just a simple majority as it applied to Monday’s sitting.”
Asked to comment on the posers raised by the Speaker against the pro-Fayose lawmakers that they trampled on the constitution by wrongly appointing a pro tem speaker without his knowledge, Dada said, “I am not aware of that in the constitution, I mean whether the house would have to contact the substantive Speaker before taking that step. One cannot conclude that they acted entirely ultra vires because only the judiciary can interprete this.
“But one thing that was clear was that the house must meet the quorum before appointing and taking such step and I also believe that that plenary could have been handled better than that. Politicians must know how to do things rightly. When I say politicians, I mean from all parties, not one party.”
One Day, One Trouble
Observers fear that the obvious game of cat and mouse being played by Fayose against the Omirin-led House of Assembly, which is assuming a dangerous dimension by the day, may return Ekiti State to the old days of “one day, one trouble,” the notorious refrain during Fayose’s first term as governor.
The preponderance of opinion is that the governor would have to come down from his Olympian height and work with the Assembly for peace in the state, realising he does not have the two-third majority to do some of the things he may be planning to do.
In a couple of weeks from now, the appropriation bill for 2015 would have to be presented and the governor would require the constitutional two-third majority to get it passed.
There are also those who feel Fayose may not lose anything since the life of the present Assembly expires on June 6 next year. Given this scenario, the lawmakers may have to choose between bowing to the governor’s intrigues and going into the next House of Assembly election poorer than they came.