An Empty Mantra,By Dan Agbese

This is not about chickens but it helps to begin with their wisdom. They always come home to roost. This is not just an English idiom but also chicken wisdom. I suppose chickens appreciate more than human beings that what goes round comes around. I feel like telling our politicians: go ye to the chickens and learn to be wise.
Here is why.
Case one. In the 2007 general elections, Mahmud Aliyu Shinkafi was elected governor of Zamfara State. He was, for eight years, the deputy governor of the state. Zamfara was an ANPP state from the inception of the civilian administration in 1999. The beauty of Shinkafi’s ascension to the state political throne was that he was the only deputy governor to take the baton from his former boss. I took that to mean that while all other governors and their deputies were bashing one another’s heads, Zamfara was a calm oasis of harmony. I thought the state had set an example that other states would follow. I thought that if we proceeded along that line of smooth succession, there would be continuity and the roots of our democracy would go deeper into the soil.
It is always unwise to jump to conclusions when you are dealing with Nigerian politicians. I should have known. With them, nothing is, as it seems. On December 5, 2008, Shinkafi put paid to my daydream. He dumped ANPP, the party that put him in power, first as deputy governor for eight years and later as governor. Just to make sure he buried ANPP in the state, he took the entire state legislators, all of whom, like him, were ANPP members, with him to his new party, PDP.
I thought it was sad for our fledgling democracy. I thought it went against the tenets of political pluralism. I thought it was a cynical annulment of his people’s constitutionally guaranteed right to be ruled by a party of their choice. President Umaru Yar’Adua did not think so. Our late chief of state, whose mantra was the rule of law, was elated. He personally and formerly received the governor and the state legislators into his party at a colourful ceremony in Gusau, the state capital. A party gets bigger by swallowing other political parties, dig?
Case 2. Isa Yuguda was a PDP member. He resigned as a minister in the Obasanjo administration because he wanted to be governor of his state, Bauchi. He butted his head against a brick wall. Ahmed Muazu, the outgoing governor of the state, had other ideas. Yuguda was not the man he penciled down as his successor. Yuguda saw his ambition evaporating. There was no room for him in his party. He did what all Nigerian politicians in search of political space do: he decamped to ANPP. He promptly received the party’s flag as its governorship candidate for the 2007 general elections. He gave Muazu a bloody nose by winning in spite of him. He did more. He turned Bauchi, for eight years a PDP state, into an ANPP state. But not for long.
Sometime in April or so, 2009, Yuguda dumped the party that made him realize his ambition. He went back to the PDP. And he too took all the state legislators with him. His deputy who chose not to toe what he regarded as the path of dishonour, was removed from office. PDP celebrated.
In my Newswatch column of April 6, 2009, I said the action of the two state governors was clearly deleterious to the health of our democracy. I said that the PDP chieftains thought nothing about the implication of what Shinkafi and Yuguda did because they were “..blinded by their ambition to turn the country into a one-party state.”
ANPP took Shinkafi to court. It was a half-hearted attempt to stop him. Its national chairman, the late Edwin Umezeoke, was already supping with the PDP. His son was a special presidential assistant. However, the court ruled that what Shinkafi did was immoral but not unconstitutional. The people paid him back for his treachery. They did not let him return in 2011.
Sometime last year, the PDP chieftains saw the chickens on their way home and the smile of conquest turned the colour of the snarl of anxiety. Seven of their governors staged a dramatic walk out of the national convention of the party in Abuja. Five of them dumped the party for APC. Four of the governors went to their new party with their state legislators. Some senators and members of the House of Representatives also dumped the party for APC. For a brief moment, PDP saw its majority evaporate in the national assembly. It recovered. The carrot is at the root of realpolitik Nigeriana.
Case 3. Now this. PDP is contesting the right of the decampees in the national assembly to dump it. It has taken them to court, seeking the court to declare their seats vacant. Yet, even as we speak, some other legislators recently decamped from APC to PDP – Nasarawa, Oyo and Adamawa, to name a few. In the tangled web of Nigerian politics, the party that controls the federal government usually confers on itself the right to break the law if doing so serves its interests.
As the judge noted in his ruling in the ANPP case against Shinkafi, the constitution does not bar a governor elected on the platform of one political party from joining another political party. Not so in the case of national and state legislators. Section 68 (1) (g) provides that a senator or a member of the House of Representatives must vacate his seat if “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.”
You find the exact provision in section 109 (1) (g), in the case of state legislators. In each case, the constitution permits a legislator to leave his party for another only if there is a division in his party or it merges with another party. It is the constitutional duty of the presiding officer of the legislature – senate president, speaker, House of Representatives and speaker of each of the state legislatures – to enforce these provisions provided he is satisfied there a satisfactory evidence of infringement. His report to that effect to the legislature constitutionally seals the fate of the affected legislator.
There has been no case since 1999 of a legislator losing his seat for decamping to another party outside the constitutional provision. So, for nearly 16 years, the lawmakers have raped the law. The PDP action against the decampees amounts to pure harassment. It does not even have the constitutional right to do so. Why is it right for legislators in other parties to decamp to PDP and wrong for PDP legislators to decamp to other parties?
Don’t even bother to answer. When next a thingamabob pushes the mantra of the rule of law in your face, try not to be overwhelmed by the pronounced dishonesty. I think the rule of law is anathema to the political culture of a country of big men and a big party.