Fearing that the coming ninth session of the national assembly is at the verge of being hijacked by the executive arm of government and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), a call has gone to elected national legislators to resist the temptation of the flesh for pecuniary benefits by mortgaging and commercialising to the Presidency their constitutional right to elect their hierarchy.
A pro-democracy organization-Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) which made the call, also urged all lovers of democracy to monitor the activities of their elected legislators at all levels to avert the sinister plots by holders of executive offices at both the national and sub-national levels to undermine the constitutionally guaranteed principle of separation of powers.
HURIWA, said it has generated a corpus of high net intelligence from elected legislators of all genres and that the signals it has received, points to a pre-determined plot by president Buhari to ensure the inauguration of a fully choreographed and rubber-stamped legislature that would be led by mostly individuals with past misdeeds which might be used as instruments of blackmail by heads of security forces and the anti-graft institutions slavishly loyal to the president to keep them in perpetual chain of control by the presidency.
The group also sounded the alarm bell that in much of the 36 states there are plots to cripple the independence of the state legislature and make the law makers subservient to the whims and caprices of the governors.
HURIWA, further said that Nigerians are obliged to resist this ‘satanic machination’ of the President and governors to turn Nigeria into a full banana Republic.
The group said the immediate consequences of having rubber stamped and non-vibrant legislative arm of government at the national scale, is that dictatorship and tyranny will become full blown even as other fundamental freedoms enshrined in the constitution would be inevitably imperiled.
HURIWA, noted that the time is almost running out to stop ‘this devilish scheme’ to enslave the entirety of Nigerians.
In a statement by the National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director, miss Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA said it has been authoritatively briefed that the moles of the presidency specifically sponsored and manipulated to emerge victorious in the just ended national assembly election, have already been told the presidency’s approved senate and federal house of representatives’ favoured and handpicked leadership just as the heads of the anti-graft bodies and other security forces have been detailed to ensure that only those persons with clearance from the cabal in the presidential villa get elected as senate and federal house of reps leaders with a threat hanging like a sword of Damocles on ”rebels” who may oppose this arrangement .
HURIWA cited sections 4 and chapter 5 beginning from sections 47 of the constitution as those which envisages separation of power and autonomy of the legislature from the executive arm in the elections of their respective leaders for both chambers of the national assembly.
Specifically, section 47. Provides thus: “There shall be a National Assembly for the Federation which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.
50. (1) There shall be:-
(a) a President and a Deputy President of the Senate, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves; and
(b) a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves.”
