COURT DECLARES DELTA LAWMAKER’S SEAT VACANT FOR DECAMPING

IN what can be described as a watershed judgment, a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State has ordered the Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Chief Victor Ochei to declare the Ukwani Constituency presently being occupied by Dr. Alphonsus Ojo vacant. Ojo’s offence was that he decamped on September 28 last year from the opposition Democratic People’s Party (DPP), under whose ticket he was elected in the April 2011 election, to the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Irked by the betrayal, in suit No. FAC/ASB/CS/129/12, the DPP and one Mr. Chukwuma Dafiakpaku had dragged the House, Ochei, Ojo and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to court, demanding that the lawmaker’s seat be declared vacant in line with Section 109 of the 1999 Constitution. In her judgment, which lasted about 10 minutes, Justice CMA Olatoregun-Ishola ruled that the Speaker must compel the embattled lawmaker to vacate his seat, as his decampment was not in order. Quoting copiously from the Constitution, Justice Olatoregun-Ishola disagreed with Ojo, who, among other reasons, said that he left the party for the PDP as a result of serious internal crisis and factionalism, which was tearing the party apart. According to her, Section 109 (g) of the Constitution unambiguously stated that: “A member of a House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House, if being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period, which the House was elected; provided that his membership of the political party is not as a result of division of the party of which he was previously a member or a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored.” She said that even if there was a crisis in the DPP, it has not in any way led to the break-up of the party, as it was still in existence with neither a faction nor a splinter group. The presiding Judge said: “The third defendant is caught by the extant provision of Section 109 of the Constitution. I am under the mandatory obligation to declare his seat vacant. Consequently the seat of the Ukwani Constituency has been declared vacant. The Speaker has been ordered to declare the seat vacant. INEC should conduct another election.” In his reaction to the Judgment he said, ”I give all glory to God Almighty, I still remain a member of the House as a stay of execution of Judgment has been filed. I will still deliver on my promises of good governance and development/accountability to Ukwuani.” He said.