A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Mr. Augustine Eneche Audu has taken a swipe on the current regime of defection by lawmakers, governors and other elected political office holders from one political party to another and has called on the judiciary to urgently make bold pronouncement compelling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct fresh elections replacing such defectors.
In an exclusive interview on Saturday in his office in Lagos, Audu noted that even though cross carpeting has been a practice since Nigeria’s First or Second Republic with no serious consequences, the traction it has gained in current dispensation is largely anchored on selfishness of the defectors.
According to him, “the Constitution in Sections 68 Sub-section 1 (g) and 109 Sub-section 1 (g) has expressly provided in both sections at the Federal and State levels that a lawmaker stands to lose his/her seat if during his/her tenure, he/she chooses to become a member of another political party before the expiration of his/her tenure.
Regrettably, he said, the politicians do not obey or abide by the law and defection has now become a norm. It has become quite rampart in this current dispensation to the point that somebody can go to bed as member of one party and wake up the next morning in another party.
“This is a total disregard and disrespect to the will of the electorate whose votes brought them to the political position. Except something is urgently done to halt the trend, the end of democracy in Nigeria may be in sight.
The various constitutional sections relating to defection however, in part gives condition under which it can be allowed, but the Senior Advocate of Nigeria dismissed the usual ‘pedestrian excuse’ of crisis within the parties as reason for defection. “It is an abuse of Sections 68 (1g) and 109 (1g).”
According to him, “that is not enough. Where there is crisis within a party, there is also an obligation to remain and solve it instead of capitalizing on such crisis to cross carpet while still retaining the position which was won on the platform of another party.”
He added that the same consequences should apply to defecting governors, even though governors are not expressly mentioned in the various sections on cross-carpeting.
The senior lawyer made it clear that “the provisions of the law are always applied with some level of logic and analogy. The fact that governors are not mentioned in the sections of constitution talking about defection does not mean that they are allowed to defect. It applies to all political parties and to all politicians. So, with interpretation, it can be construed to mean that even governors, president etc are not freely allowed to defect.”
Speaking on the causes of delay in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria, Audu; a graduate of Law from the Benue State University with a Master’s degree in Corporate Governance and Law from the United Kingdom, posited that there are many factors responsible for the delay, explaining that it has nothing to do with the courts alone.
Addressing the issues one after the other, he pointed out that the courts were often congested with many cases, which invariably give much workload to the judges. “Sometimes, it has to do with the prosecution team not being ready, some times, it has to do with evidence not being available, some times it has to do with witnesses not being available or not properly protected.”
He explained that, in some cases, natural causes like power outage, poor environment, could make court not to sit for trial of cases.
He also cited the cases of delay emanating from lawyers who engage in interlocutory applications which delay the trial itself and also affect the speed
