The action of the speaker of the
Federal House of Representatives Femi Gbajabiamila in his arbitrary imposition
of Mr. Ndu Elumelu of the PDP as the minority leader of the Federal House of
Representatives is in total, flagrant and unambiguous violation of established
convention and ethical codes regarding the mode of selection of the leaders of
the caucuses of political parties in the parliament.
His unconstitutional imposition of a
leader on the PDP is absolutely condemnable and is an attempt at destroying the
fundamentals of our constitutional democracy.
The attempt of the speaker of the
Federal House of Representatives to impose a leadership for the minority party
in the parliament is unconstitutional, is illegal, is an attempted coup and it
must be resisted by every possible means because it is an action that if not
corrected will destroy the fundamentals of our constitutional democracy.
In every constitutional democracy,
the party caucuses in the parliaments are decided by the hierarchies of the respective
political parties. If PDP is the minority party in the parliament, it is the
PDP national leadership that will select their leaders in the parliament in
line with the party's constitution. It is not for the speaker of the parliament
who is not a member of the PDP to sue motto select the leadership of the PDP in
that parliament. It is like a student who has been asked to write his bachelor
degree and he's being asked to mark his bachelor degree, the student will
definitely produce a first class for himself.
What the speaker of the Federal
Parliament is trying to do is to institute a one party parliament which must be
resisted. This violation by Gbajabiamila should not be taken as just an offense
to PDP but an offense against the constitutional democracy that every Nigerian
should speak out that is why Human Rights Writers Association of Nigerian
(HURIWA) is speaking out. We don’t belong to PDP nor APC.
The election of Gbajabiamila is even
fundamentally tainted because the process that led to his election violated the
norms that are involved for selecting the speaker of the parliament because
people who took part in the election were seen taking photographs of their
ballot papers and there was a claim that if you don't take the photograph,
which is an evidence to collect money after voting. Gbajabiamila's election was
against the parliamentary code of conduct on how election should be conducted.
Here he is trying to foist an unpopular minority leader on PDP so he can have
his way as a tyrant.
The earlier the security institutions
are activated to stop this malfeasance the better for Nigeria because this act
is going to lead to a total collapse of the Federal House of Representatives.
We call on all pro-democracy groups
in Nigeria irrespective of their political affiliations to speak up. If
possible, organize nation-wide protests to make sure that Gbajabiamila doesn't
set up a puppet kind of parliament to become a stooge of the executive arm of
government. This is a call to salvage our democracy from the hands of
emerging dictatorship.
COMRADE EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO;
National Coordinator; Human Rights
WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA).
No comments:
Post a Comment