By Bisi Lawrence
Aminu Tambuwal is not a traitor. He is an honourable man, deserving of that title as a member of the House of Representatives, and its highly respected Speaker to boot. His activities in that position in the past three years have bequeathed an aura of decency to the conduct and disposition of the august assembly to a degree unequalled by his predecessors, some of whom were swept out of office in unpleasant circumstances. He remained a member of the PDP in every way honourable at every turn of the road, protecting and defending the Constitution in the gentlemanly discharge of his office according to its provisions.
Leaving a political party for
another has been a feature of political movement for ages, even before Nigerian
politics was born. The great Winston Churchill of Great Britain is on record as
having moved from the Liberals to the Conservatives before becoming one of the
most successful Prime Ministers of his nation. “Crossing the carpet” did not
make him a traitor.
Here in Nigeria, one recalls that
the formation of the first government of the defunct Western
Region was as a
consequence of a massive defection from the NCNC to the Action Group. In fact,
changing one’s membership of one political party for another, could be
described as a time-honoured feature of healthy politics. Even political
parties, not just their members, are known to have discarded one policy for a
new one. And so, people who were formerly elected into such parties may then be
open to a choice, especially if the change occurred at the level of their
constituency. In Nigeria where party politics is not unusually aligned to the
leanings of a particular leading figure, whole States have been known to change
with the fancy of their leaders.
Tambuwal
It is uncharitable, to say the
least, to characterize defection—to use the slightly derogatory term of
switching from one party to the other—as treachery. There is no “high principle”
involved in calling quits to an association which has gone sour. It is, in
fact, rife in our body politic. We have seen politicians who left a party as
backbenchers in one organization to emerge as cabinet members in the
government formed by another party. There have been politicians who stood for
two different parties as the presidential flag-bearers on different occasions.
The ceremony, accompanied by sheer delight with which a man, or woman, who
changes from one political party to another is received in the new party shows
that what one party has lost, the other has gained. End of story.
No one is a PDP man, or an APC man …
or whatever… .for longer than he says he is. The basis of his or her membership
is at the constituency identity. That is the essence of the power of recall
from the home ground. In all the defection that was spread all over the nation
of recent, we have not experienced the exercise of that machinery of recall
till now. Surely, the electorates know their rights? The party organization
could have educated them more about the situation if it sees any headway there.
But each affected political party has sought for redress from the law courts,
though with very little success so far. For me, that indicates that very few
organizations have any confidence in the alignment of their policies with those
of their grassroots elements.
That then brings up the important
rider in the conditions under which the Constitution permits a legislator to
change from one party to another without losing his or her seat. It has become
the most quoted part of the 1999 Constitution in recent days. It is Section 68
(c) and runs thus:
“A member of the Senate or of the
House of Representatives shall vacate his seat in the House of which he is a
member if he being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a
political party he becomes a member of another political party before the
expiration of the period for which that House was elected: provided that his
membership of the latter political party is not as a result of division in the
political party of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or
more political parties or factions by which he was previously sponsored.”
That means that while the movement
of one’s membership of a party is frowned upon, it is permitted if there is a
dissension within the party or in the case of a merger with another party. It
does not lead to an automatic termination of one’s membership of the house. It
is for Tambuwal to prove that there was what could be described as a division,
or accepted as a division, in his former party, the PDP, prior to his movement.
That description may be considered at the level of the House or his
constituency, depending on whatever interpretation is favoured in view of the
impact which either location did have on the Speaker.
One should also remark that it is
patently jejune to speak of the identity of the Speaker as belonging to a party
stripe. A PDP man is voted into office as a House Speaker—not as a PDP speaker.
Whilst his party affiliation may colour his activities, he is expected, in the
main, to be fair to the motivations and deliberations originated by all the
members of the House, irrespective of their party. This has to be no less so in
the case of Tambuwal who was, in fact, elected with the help of the entire
House membership.
It cannot have been forgotten that
the Speaker earned his office through the collaboration of the ADC. He was not
the official candidate of his party. The PDP sponsored a lady member, Mulikat
Akande, but members of the ACN, the erstwhile opposition, joined some
dissidents from the PDP to install Tambuwal. That made the gentleman a
veritable Speaker of no particular party, but a true servant of all parties—and
that was what Tambuwal truly has been. The House had never enjoyed such
openness, such smooth control. It is therefore false to categorize him as
having been elected “under” the PDP platform, or to misconstrue his even-handed
direction of the House affairs as “shenanigans designed to frustrate the express
will of the Nigerian electorate”.
The support of the opposition for
Tambuwal was pure politics. The claim that Mulikat Akande was proposed by the
PDP in order to placate the Southwest’s desire for a share of the “national
cake” is no more than a convenient excuse. But it would have served to fulfil
their putative pattern of “zoning”. Since the President had come from the
South-south, the Vice-President from the North Central and the Head of the
Senate from the North East, it would have fitted admirably for the fourth place
to have been claimed by the Southwest. It would demonstrate the country-wide
expanse of the PDP. But it would also have established an outpost of influence
for the party within a stronghold zone of the opposition. That was what the ACN
rejected when it supported someone from another area against an indigene of
their own soil. That is politics and to suggest that it would not have worked
out if the situation had been reversed only declares a pathetic ignorance of
political manoeuvres. The PDP, of course, would have gleefully reacted
precisely in like manner if they were in the same position as the opposition at
that time.
It has been painful for the
“greatest”, (or is it “largest”?) political party in Africa. The police was
made to withdraw the security to which Tambuwal is entitled as a speaker, thus
ensuring that a law-enforcement agency would become a law-breaking agent. The
chief hack-writers of the PDP, whose pages now drip with tears as well as
vitriol, support this “bush” tactics and even invoke more of the “nuisance
value” which the government is capable of adding to any politician’s existence.
But all that will not change the truth. Tambuwal is NOT a traitor. He has
betrayed no one.
