By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja
The House of Representatives was in a stormy session yesterday when report of a committee mandated to advise it on a motion seeking to stop the President from deploying troops for election purposes was presented.
Minority Leader of the House, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, had last Wednesday raised a motion under matters of urgent public importance, challenging the propriety of military deployment for election purposes, and debate on the issue was scheduled for the next day.
When he moved the motion last Thursday, he was challenged by another member, Hon. Sunday Karimi, who reminded the House that based on its rules, the motion could not be taken since the matter was a subject of a pending litigation in one of the nation’s appellate courts.
This prompted Speaker Aminu Waziri Tambuwal to direct the Committees on Rules and Business, Judiciary, and Justice to jointly review the issues and advise the House accordingly.
The joint panel, in the report presented on its behalf yesterday by chairman of the Committee on Rules and Business, Albert Sam-Tsokwa, however, advised the House to discard the motion on grounds that it was “effectively caught in the cobweb of both the constitution and the House standing orders.”
The committee argued that the Constitution and the Armed Forces Act sufficiently gave powers to the President on the operational use of the military, and that an earlier resolution on the same subject matter, which gave the INEC chairman powers to request for the deployment of the military during elections, before such is done if need be, can be rescinded to take the motion in question, only through another substantive motion.
Ruling based on the advice as suggested by the panel, Deputy Speaker of the House, Emeka Ihedioha, who presided over the plenary, upheld the call by Karimi to drop the motion, a development that angered members of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) and their leader, Gbajabiamila, who made frantic unsuccessful moves to bring up the matter again.
Tempers continued to rise as members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were applauding the decision, while their APC counterparts were sternly opposing any attempt to continue the proceedings.
The session was turned into a shouting bout as the words “PDP” and “APC” continued to rent the air from the opposing camps, after which the APC Caucus staged a walk-out.
Addressing newsmen outside the chamber, the Minority Leader accused Ihedioha of trying, the day earlier, to allow a listed motion to be moved through a proxy.
He said: “You saw what happened yesterday when it has never happened in the history of legislative work where another member attempted to move a motion sponsored by a member because we have the kind of Deputy Speaker that we have never had before in this country. He threw all caution to the wind and he attempted to allow it, if not that we stood steadfast.
“But yet again today we said a situation where a motion that was supposed to be moved by myself and other members of the House was brought to a halt by the chairman, Rules and Business, who was actually debating my motion for me, who claimed and who said that there was no evidence that there was a court case, but yet he felt that the motion should die a natural death, and of course the Deputy Speaker, in typical fashion, partisan as best as he can, upheld that verdict.
“You heard when a leader of the House, Samson Osagie (Minority Whip), attempted to raise a point of order which he is entitled to not just as a member but as a leader, but he was shut down. Enough is enough.”
The APC Caucus members later returned to the chamber, this time to ensure that nothing works, even as a report which was under consideration had to be discontinued due to their inordinate shouting.
The PDP Caucus, led by Majority Leader Mulikat Akande-Adeola, at a press briefing later described the action of the APC members as “unparliamentary,” calling on members to embrace decorum when the House is in session, irrespective of political party affiliations.