Nigerian legislators appear to have thrown a Constitutional prohibition of cross-carpeting into the dustbin. Recent defections have been heavy on the leadership side. Top on the list is the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Abdullahi Yahaya who moved from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP)\u00a0 and consequently forfeited his Majority Leader position, which is yet to be filled. Another resignation is that of the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe who defected from the main opposition party, PDP to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and consequently resigned his position as Minority Leader. He was replaced by Senator Philip Aduda (Federal Capital Territory) of the PDP. Aduda\u2019s previous position as Minority Whip of the Senate was filled by Senator Chukwuka Utazi (Enugu North), also of the PDP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the legislators in the two leading parties who\nfailed in their party primaries may have moved to lesser known parties to\nenable them to be on the ballot for the 2023 general elections. There is\nhowever, the interesting trend of several of the ruling APC Senators either\nalready moving to other parties or threatening to do so. This could cost the\nparty its majority in the National Assembly, especially the Senate. Already,\ntwenty-two aggrieved APC Senators who failed to win in the primaries have met\nwith President Muhammadu Buhari and are threatening to leave the party. The President is reported to have told them\nto exercise patience as the party promises to review their situation. It is not\nclear how the review intends to be achieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section 68(1)(g) of the Constitution of the Federal\nRepublic of Nigeria specifically prohibits cross-carpeting, although it makes\nprovision for the circumstances under which a person may retain his\/her seat in\na legislative House were he\/she to move from his\/her party to another. This\nsection of the Constitution provides that a member of the National Assembly\nshall vacate his\/her seat in the House of which he\/she is a member if: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cbeing a person whose election to the House was\nsponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party\nbefore the expiration of the period for which that House was elected; <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Provided that his membership of\nthe latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political\nparty of which he was previously a member or of a merger of two or more\npolitical parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The provision gives conditions for which a legislator\ncan defect from one party to another, the condition being that there is a\ndivision within his or her party or that there has been a merger of political\nparties, involving the legislator\u2019s party. In many cases, legislators defect\nwithout the existence of any of these conditions, thereby violating this\nConstitutional provision. Although for recent defections that have occurred,\nsome legislators have cited internal party crises within their parties at the\nState level, it is difficult to ascertain these claims in the absence of clear\nevidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n National Assembly members who have recently defected\nfrom their parties to other parties include: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Senate<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n House of Representatives<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nigerian legislators appear to have thrown a Constitutional prohibition of cross-carpeting into the dustbin. Recent defections have been heavy on the leadership side. Top on the list is the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Abdullahi Yahaya who moved from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to People\u2019s Democratic Party (PDP)\u00a0 and consequently forfeited his Majority Leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2762\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}