By Gbade Ogunwale, Abuja
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called on the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, to ignore the directive given him by the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, to provide security for 17 members of the Edo State House of Assembly.
The AGF gave the directive on Friday, following the inauguration of the 17 as members of the state’s House of Assembly. The 17 lawmakers were shut out of the Assembly in a power play that saw the inauguration of only seven of the 24-member legislative body at inception.
Faulting Malami’s directive, the PDP said having been absent from the Assembly for more than 180 days, the 17 lawmakers had automatically lost their seats.
The seven-member faction had since declared the 17 seats vacant and had called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct by-elections to fill their seats.
At a media briefing in Abuja yesterday, the spokesman for the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, described the directive of the AGF as thoughtless, unconstitutional, null, void and of no effect.
The party said nothing in Sections 90, 91, 101 and 104 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) cited by the Attorney General empowered him “to go to the streets of any part of our nation to assemble some clowns” and declare them members-elect of any House of Assembly, without any electoral mandate.
Insisting that the AGF’s directive was reckless, Ologbondiyan said it is trite in law that with their seats declared vacant by the House, the 17 members consequently lost their memberships and respective mandates.
Continuing, the PDP spokesman said: “Furthermore, the Attorney General ought to have availed himself of the facts that the Edo State House of Assembly, as constitutionally constituted, had written to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), asking it to conduct fresh elections into the vacant seats in line with the provisions of our constitution and the Electoral Act.
“If the AGF had bothered to get his facts correctly before issuing the unconstitutional warrant for the Gestapo operation to the IGP, he would have known that the matter of the declaration of the seats of the errant individuals and the request for the conduct of fresh elections to fill the vacant seats are pending in competent Court in Edo State at the instance of his ‘clients’ and therefore, it is subjudice for him to speak on it or cause an action to be taken.
“Yet, Malami is painfully our nation’s federal law officer.”
