State Assembly Speakers Seek Protective Law Against Impeachment

By Ayodele Oni

State Houses of Assembly in the country are working on uniform rules and order to guide their operations.

To this end, a technical meeting on harmonizing standing orders of state parliaments is ongoing on Abuja, the Federal Capital.

Chairman of the Conference of Speakers of State Houses of Assembly of Nigeria,  Abubakar Sulaiman, disclosed at the venue of the conference that such uniform legislation would guide against the indiscriminate removal of Speakers.

“It is one of the issues that we are targeting to avoid this overnight impeachment of Speakers among the elected representatives, the Speakers of the State Assemblies are the most vulnerable.

“Certain members of the House if they dislike you for one reason or the other they will just come and say we’ve come out with a number of members and we are removing you.

“This development unlike what is happening in the South East and the South West, you cannot just do that in that place.

“You have to grant the Speaker the fair hearing, you have to give him the chance to defend himself. If you have reasons to impeach him, then come and tell him the reasons then you give him the benefit of fair hearing to answer.

“Then if you’re not okay, he can be impeached. So, it’s aimed at sanitizing our Assemblies on the issue of impeachment.”

The leader of the Speakers also spoke on the ongoing amendments of the 1999 Constitution transmitted by the National Assembly, saying it would be concluded this month.

Sulaiman explained that the ongoing ‘Technical meeting on harmonising Standing Orders of State Houses of Assembly’ is at the instance of the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) in collaboration with Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and State Accountability and Voice Initiative (SAVI).

“It’s in the process. As of now, I think we have five or six States that have already passed it and other States are still on course.

“You know when this draft was sent to the State Houses of Assembly, there were so many issues that stopped us from going on, like State primary elections, recess and so on and so forth.

“But I assure you, this month of August we will definitely do something about it.”