The face-off between the President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio and his fellow Senate accuser, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan took a new twist last week when stories began to emerge of a recall process being instituted against her. Both Senators have been in the eye of the storm since Senator Natasha challenged reallocation to a new seat in the Senate. She followed this up with allegations of sexual harassment against the President of the Senate.
She was subsequently suspended by the Senate following a report by the Senate Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions Committee where she was charged with misconduct and suspended from the Senate for 6 legislative months, which effectively ousts her from the Senate for about one calendar year.
Senator Akpoti has since gone to town granting media interviews on local and international news outlets and digging deep on her allegations against the President of the Senate. A report made by her to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) was acknowledged by the President of the IPU, who stated that they will wait to hear from Senator Akpabio before reaching a decision on next steps.
In a new twist however, Senator Natasha’s traducers appear not to be relenting and had orchestrated a recall process against her. According to the promoters of her recall, more than 50% of registered voters in her Kogi Central Senatorial District signed off on the petition to recall her.
The recall process is a mechanism used to impeach legislators in the State or National Assembly, it is different from the process of impeachment of Governors or the President.
Since the commencement of the current 4th republic, there has been no successful impeachment of a legislator as the constitutional provisions for impeachment is quite onerous. Section 69 of the Constitution provides for recall of a legislator and states as that a member of the Senate or House of Representatives may be recalled if more than one half of the persons registered to vote in the constituency sign up to a petition.
This requirement was made even more stringent in the amendment of said Section 69 during the first alteration of the constitution in 2010 by the inclusion of the added condition that the signatures signing up to a petition must be duly verified by the INEC. The said section 69 also requires that INEC carry out a referendum within 90 days of receipt of the recall petition. The referendum will succeed only if a simple majority of registered voters in the constituency approve the recall.
This constitutional provision in section 69 is very clear, yet difficult to surmount. In an electoral environment where the voters register is often bloated and a number of persons who turn out to vote matches less than 40% of voters, it is understandable how difficult it would be for INEC can verify that 50% plus one of voters in a constituency have signed up to a petition. In addition, 50% plus one of registered voters is what constitutes the vote required to remove an elected legislator, meaning that the same number of persons who sign up to a recall process must also all fully vote for the recall to succeed.
INEC has however on Thursday, announced that the petition to recall Senator Natasha did not meet the constitutional requirements outlined in Section 69 of the Constitution. This development follows INEC’s earlier acceptance of the petition, pending verification of signatures from the constituents and that no further action will be taken on the recall of the Senator.
Senator Natasha would not be the first legislator to face the threat of a recall since the 4th Republic – Senator Dino Melaye, Senator Francis Nzeribe, Senator Ali Ndume, and Senator Jubril Aminu have all been threatened with impeachment from legislative positions, with all of this coming to nought. The reality is, the recall procedure is just so herculean that it would be nearly impossible to achieve.