Fort Dino

Any elected representative in political office who truly knows legitimacy derives from voters should welcome the occasion, no matter how dubiously orchestrated, to spot-check his/her mandate with the people. If strongly validated at such opportunity, he secures a moral high ground he badly needs to rebuff the hurdlecrowd and hecklers within the power elite, and stay the course with his agenda that had thereby been shown acceptable to electoral constituents. And where he survives, but just by the teeth, he gets the strongest cue to recalibrate his program in alignment with the electors’ preferences. Either way, he gains something; unless he is wholly rejected by the constituents, in which case he had no business being in the office any more.

That was the logic of the gamble by British Prime Minister Theresa May who called a snap election for June 8, this year, that turned awry. Scheduled poll was not due in Britain until 2020, but May had hoped a renewed mandate and bigger parliamentary majority for Tories would strengthen her hand against party rebels and opposition cynics who had been hassling her over Brexit negotiations with the EU. Only that the gamble backfired, resulting in leaner Tory presence in the British parliament and compelling the coalition deal that currently sustains her in office.

It is evident that Nigeria’s Senator Dino Melaye wouldn’t dare a voluntary gamble at revalidating his mandate from Kogi West senatorial district voters – at least, not outside the electoral cycle. And when the occasion was foisted on him by purported constituents lately seeking his recall from the Senate, he bunkered up in the legislative chamber to demand protection from persons who ostensibly sent him there to represent them. Only last week, Dino Melaye sought mandate protection from the Senate against supposed voters who had given him that very mandate. And curiously, the Senate dug into the trenches to provide the shelter he sought. It is the Americans who call their military formations forts, we call ours garrisons. But for brevity, you could say the Senate’s other name at the moment is Fort Dino.

The ‘distinguished senator’ has for some time been at loggerheads with political ally turned foe, Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello, who he fingers for alleged dubious plot to oust him from the Senate. And that may well be true: politicians spare no quarter in their attritious turf wars. But he would not even allow the possibility to be interrogated in line with the Nigerian law. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on June 21 received roughsacks containing signatures purported to be from 52.3 percent of the registered voter population in Kogi West, demanding Melaye’s recall from the Senate. And Section 69 of our Constitution (as amended) provides for those signatures to be “duly verified” by INEC, which the electoral body scheduled August 19 to do in all polling units within the constituency. The outcome of such verification, according to existing law, should determine whether the electoral body would conduct a referendum to allow Kogi West constituents openly have their say on Melaye’s continued stay in the red chamber. But the senator preemptively headed to court to leash INEC from proceeding with the statutorily prescribed process, and reports at the weekend were that he secured an order stopping the commission.

Melaye had earlier last week stepped up his ambuscade by rallying the Senate to delegitimize INEC’s process. Coming through Order 14 at the chamber’s plenary on Tuesday, he not just again accused the Kogi governor of masterminding the recall bid, he also indicted the electoral body as complicit in the alleged subterfuge. “The score of both valid and invalid votes in the election that brought me into the Senate in 2015 was 118,000, but my governor and his appointees in four days claimed they got signatures of over 188,000,” Melaye said. “They got INEC’s database of registered voters and copied into a recall register, and forged all the signatures. As I speak to you, I have over 120 dead certificates issued by the National Population Commission, and these people’s relations have sworn to affidavits and these certificates have been deposited. The names of all these dead people appeared on the recall register submitted to INEC,” he added.

The catch here is: since INEC has not complained of its database being hacked, the alleged copying, if true, must be with insider collusion by the commission. Of course, nothing is beyond the pale in these matters, and I doubt that the INEC leadership would vouch for every single staff member. But the whole point of the scheduled  verification of signatures is to demonstrably expose such shenanigans, so why wouldn’t Melaye brook going through with that process?

Then, it was well within the senator’s right of free speech to make those allegations; what was troubling was the Senate’s seeming fore-conclusion on them. Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who presided at the plenary, waved off Melaye’s anxiety by dubbing the recall bid futile. “I am wondering why we are dissipating energy on this matter and wasting precious legislative time on a matter we should not. What is happening in Kogi in respect of Senator Dino Melaye, as far as the Constitution is concerned, is an exercise in futility,” he said.

His confidence was not hinged on Melaye’s acquittal based on recall procedures outlined in Section 69, though, but on some curious interpretation of Section 68(1)(h), which provides that a member of the Senate (or House of Reps, as the case may be) shall vacate his seat if “the President of the Senate…receives a certificate under the hand of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission stating that the provisions of Section 69 of this Constitution have been complied with in respect of the recall of that member.”

Ekweremadu hinted that this provision is for a magisterial, and not administrative function, saying: “When they are done, they will go back to Section 68, which states that the President of the Senate receives from the chairman of INEC the recall of the member. They would also present evidence satisfactory to the House or the Senate; so they need to come back here and convince each and every one of us that they have done the correct thing. Unless they do that, they cannot even give effect to it.”

Senate President Bukola Saraki, who was in the chamber at the time, cheerled his presiding deputy who has endured in that office across dispensations. “As they say, 10 years is no joke in leadership. The Deputy Senate President has explained the processes. So let the process speak for itself. I really don’t know why efforts are being wasted that should have gone into more important things. Eventually, it must come back here for us to decide whether it is satisfactory or not,” he said.

I am not a lawyer and would not even hazard legal arguments here, but I dare say the Constitution’s intent can’t accord with the Senate’s interpretation. It is against the grain of justice for an accused (or his prejudiced class) to adjudicate in his own matter. If the constitutional requirement is meant as suggested, the National Assembly is a veritable fort and no member will ever get recalled by aggrieved constituents.