One of the more useful clauses of Nigeria’s constitution is the right of citizens to recall their representatives in parliament. The argument for this novel clause is the need to protect the rights of the electorate and make their representatives genuinely serve their interest throughout the duration of the representatives’ stay in Parliament.
However, a combination of circumstances might lead the electorate to decide that their representative needs to vacate his place in Parliament. Therefore section 69 (A and B) makes an explicit provision to assist in the achievement of that aim.
The relevant provision says that “A member of Senate or of the House of Representatives may be recalled as such a member, if there is presented to the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, a petition in that behalf signed by more than one-half of the persons registered to vote in that member’s constituency alleging their loses of confidence in that member and the petition is thereafter, in a referendum conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission within ninety days of the date of receipt of the petition, approved by a simple majority of the votes of the persons registered to vote in that member’s constituency.”
The clause was intended by the framers of the constitution to give a final opportunity to the electorate to determine that an elected Senator or a member of the House of Representatives is living up into his responsibility or not.
In letter and spirit, it is expected this right would be exercised in a responsible manner by the people concerned.
However, in recent times what has been happening is a concerted attempt by party interests to manipulate this right to recall, not with an altruistic intention to help strengthen the democratic process in the country, but just to settle cheap political scores.
Three senators have been caught in the eye of a storm of attempts to recall them, not by members of their constituencies, but by some other members of the political establishments in their states, for reasons that clearly expose the cloak and dagger irresponsibility at the heart of contemporary Nigerian democracy.
Senator Jibril Aminu is being threatened with recall in Adamawa State because of allegations that he does not support the presidential ambition of Vice President Atiku Abubakar at the end of the Obasanjo’s tenure in 2007. Jibril Aminu, is a close friend of another much-touted candidate for 2007, General Ibrahim Babangida; he is therefore assumed to be supporting Babangida for whom he worked as a minister in the past against Vice President Atiku.
So without raising issues about Jibril Aminu’s performance in senate, the Adamawa State government has been expending a lot of energy to achieve the collection of the necessary signatures to ensure the recall of Senator Jibril Aminu from Senate.
Similarly, there have been allegations raised against Senators Farouk Bello Bunza and Usman Sani Sami from Kebbi State. Bunza who attended the recent Northern Senators conference in Sokoto was accused of attending a gathering, tagged PDP senators meeting by his accusers. But the truth seemed to be that he was caught up in a supremacy tussle between his governor, Adamu Aliero and Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto State.
On the other hand, the case against Sani Sami was also alleged to be a most flippant accusation that has led to attempts to collect signatures to remove him from the Senate.
In each of the examples of attempt at recall from senate, we do not believe that the issues concerned touch the vital interests of the people that these senators represent in Nigeria’s upper legislature chamber. It is very important for our political actors to learn to assist the development of Nigeria’s democratic process by helping to grow our institutions instead of reducing them to their personal ego trips as these examples have shown.
Nigeria’s people and their well-being must be the ultimate objective of our political activities. It is within such a context that politics will move away from an avenue to just corner resources; those who instituted the right to recall in the constitution wanted the right to be wielded with a great deal of caution and a sense of responsibility. What is happening today is far from this vision.
For too long, our political elite has carried out politics with scant regard for the feelings of the people, and it is this irresponsibility of the elite that is gradually alienating the Nigerian people from the political process. Such an alienation is not good for an emergent democratic culture as we are attempting to institute in our country.
We therefore urge caution in the way that the political elite is tying to use the right to recall as a weapon of blackmail. It is important to use it in a most cautions manner, and its use must genuinely emanate from the disillusionment of the people of the representative’s constituency not from those who can manipulate the entire system.
The recent attempts to recall Senators Jibril Aminu, Farouk Bello Bunza and Usman Sani Sami, do not meet the test of caution and responsibility which we believe the constitution calls for and we therefore urge all those concerned in these vindictive efforts to stop forthwith.
