Nigeria, the EPL and the Contradictions, by Hassan Gimba
The Arbiter
When ideas, statements, or policies emanating from one source are opposed to one another, conflicting or inconsistent, then we have contradictions.
I want to start this with something that has been bothering me for years. It made me propose that it be featured on the cover of Leadership Friday in 2016 when I was promoted from its editor to managing editor (content). I was so peeved by it, but my then Group Managing Director (GMD), Mr Cletus Akwaya (now publisher of Daily Asset), overruled me.
I was concerned by the contradiction in our educational system. A student may get eight credits in their WAEC or NECO exams and maybe score 200 in JAMB, but that student would be deemed unqualified to study medicine in our universities because the “cut-off mark” for medicine may start from 250, depending on the university.
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However, their mate from a well-to-do or connected family, with three credits and a JAMB score of 120 could go abroad and study medicine and return to Nigeria as a full-fledged medical doctor.
Another one has to do with our education laws and our penal system. Until last week, one of the entry requirements into our universities was that a candidate must be at least 18 years old while JAMB allowed 16-year-olds. Another contradiction by partner organisations! However, that does not stop under-16s being arraigned in, wait for it, regular courts, not juvenile courts! But again, one cannot speak about contradictions and courts and fail to notice contradictory judgements by courts of equal jurisdiction. Because that has been largely ignored, some lower courts have now started contradicting the judgements of the Supreme Court.
Even though in 2004, the Supreme Court gave a verdict against the federal government under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo withholding the funds of the local governments of Lagos State, the Federal High Court recently gave a judgment for the stoppage of the statutory allocations to Rivers State.
The reason is that the state budget was presented to an inchoate state assembly, which a state High Court had already faulted. An Appeal Court sided with the lower court, and the state government appealed to the Supreme Court.
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But what rendered the state assembly incomplete, and why are there apparent contradictions? Well, 27 or so members of the 32-member Rivers State House of Assembly announced their defection to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in December 2023. Out of the remaining five members, one has died, and another is now the Chief of Staff to Rivers State Governor Siminalayi Fubara.
Ideally, it is supposed to be a cut-and-dried issue and, by now, the state should have its full complement of legislators through another election, based on the 1999 Constitution.
Section 109(1)(g) of the Constitution provides thus: (1) A member of a House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if: (g) Being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of any other political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected: Provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member, or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored.
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Therefore, a defecting legislator must show explicitly that there is serious division in the political party he is defecting from, a merger of two or more political parties or a faction by which he was previously sponsored. Where the legislator fails to address these decisive constitutional issues, his defection to another political party is tantamount to vacating his seat.
It is on this premise that human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, insisted that members of the Rivers State House of Assembly who defected from the PDP to the APC had forfeited their positions in the legislative body.
He said, “The Supreme Court made this clear in the case of Adetunde and the Labour Party, that you cannot decamp and then remain a member of a legislative house in Nigeria unless you can show that there is a division in your party. It doesn’t mean a division in a local government or a state; it has to be on the national level. That is the position of the court.”
I also came across some media reports in which the police in Yobe State forcefully entered a court and whisked away two of their officers standing trial for brutality in a manner unbecoming of a law enforcement agency.
But our contradictions do not just stop there because there are people who have been playing the games of cats and mice with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, who ultimately assume offices that the EFCC Chairman will either be answerable to them or must hang their portraits in his office.
Many, many other contradictions in our country have made us somewhat like the English Premier League (EPL).
You see, the EPL is branded the best in the world by the haughty British press, yet on every match day, the referees are slammed for their inefficiency, poor decision-making, and inconsistent performances despite the availability of a video replay facility.
Can you beat that?
Hassan Gimba, anipr, is the publisher and CEO of Neptune Prime.
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