Poll Highlights: Total votes: 21; Those for recall: 20 (95%); Those against recall: 1 (5%); Those on neutral ground: Zero
By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor
Update coming from the ongoing opinion poll being conducted by The DEFENDER over whether or not it is right the Senator representing Kogi West in the Senate, Mr. Dino Melaye, should be recalled, continues to be on the rise in favour of the recall process.
The poll, which stood at 13 voters as at the time of publication on July 14, has risen to 21 on Saturday with 20 representing 95 percent of voters saying “It is right”, one representing five percent saying “It is wrong”, while zero voter says “I don’t know”.
This was coming as number of people thronging the news website of The DEFENDER to read the online newspaper’s published stories has now hit 101,750 as at afternoon of Saturday. The medium, which will soon hold its maiden event in form of the conference for the support of ulcer patients, award honour for Nigerian contributors of peace and greatness and formal launching of the media organisation, was established on June 2, 2016 and became registered by a United States domain handling organisation to operate in Nigeria as media effort “defending the truth and national integrity”.
Its intervention includes conducting of opinion polls in helping sample the feelings of the public concerning issues of national importance. One of them is the one ongoing on recall of Senator Dino Melaye.
Melaye’s recall had generated tussle, first, between him and the Governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello as he blamed his travail on the governor. The tussle later shifted to between him and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with full support of the Bukola Saraki-led Senate where he is vurrently a member and which boasted that the fate of the embattled Senate did not lie with INEC but Senate.
But when INEC defied the Senate’s boast and went ahead with the recall process, Melaye realising that not even the Senate of a Senate President, who he had done so much for which made many Nigerians see him as “thug of Saraki”, could save him, he quickly ran to a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja which in its ruling some days back not only refused his prayers to stop INEC process of recalling him but also that “status quo” be allowed to run until a date in September when his application would be heard.
Status quo in this case has meant different things to different people, but considering the fact that nobody can stop INEC from recalling any lawmaking, popular interpretation favours that it means that INEC would go ahead to recall Dino Melaye his application before a court notwithstanding.
But INEC had its own area of focus: total adherence to provisions of the Constitution which says in carrying out recall of any lawmaker, he cannot be hindered by anybody.
It therefore continued with the process, pending case or not, wielding the evidence of an Appeal Court judgment of 2001 which unknown to Dino Melaye and Saraki, says no court or anybody can stop recall of any lawmaker by INEC and has therefore pasted the notice of time table of the recall process at his state headquarters in Lokoja signifying that it has been kicked off.
The INEC’s determination and unstoppable posture may have meant a defeat for the entire Senate which feels, according to its dispositions so far as seen by members of the public in many matters of national progress and development, that they must always be above the law. The is also as leadership of the Senate was heard loudly in the past few days attacking the Attorney-General of Kogi State over the Melaye debacle.
Many watchers of the event as it unfolds say the Senate should stop beating about the bush and face the reality that it is the Melaye’s constituents that are showing him that “people who have the powers to put you in office also have the powers to either ask you to continue or remove you depending on your performance or misbehavior.”
Per adventure in trying to satisfy all sides, INEC stood down on the recall process saying it did not want to be seen as disobeying court. It however explained that its standing down did not mean suspending Melaye’s recall process as negatively reported in the media (excluding The DEFENDER) saying it only allowed a window for the decision of court based on the order served on it by Melaye’s lawyer Chief Mike Ozekomeh, whose interpretation of “status quo” meant that INEC should suspend the process pending the determination of application of client before the court.
But realizing that adjournment till September 29 was a ploy to cause constitutional crisis trying to block it from carrying out its constitutional responsibility, the INEC had moved for a fast tract of the case to be heard much earlier within the 90 days it has to carry out the recall process.
Along the move, INEC reportedly dragged the lower court before the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) pointing out to him the constitutional implications of the a Federal High Court’s decision to adjourn a case as sensitive as the one at hand beyond the 90 stipulated by law.
Meanwhile in a July 14 motion filed before the vacation judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said the interim order stopping the process of recalling the senator representing the Kogi West, Dino Melaye, was made by Justice John Tsoho of the Federal High Court in Abuja, without considering key provisions of the constitution.
It therefore requested that the interim order granted on July 6 Tsoho be vacated.
In the motion filed on July 14, INEC contended that the interim order was granted without Justice Tsoho considering the constitutional provision mandating it to conduct a referendum for Melaye’s recall within 90 days from the date it received the constituents’ petition to that effect.
Justice Tsoho had on July 6, 2017 granted the ex parte interim order stopping INEC from going ahead with the recall process and adjourned the case until September 29.
But INEC’s lawyer, Mr. Sulayman Ibrahim, had filed the application seeking the setting aside of the interim order before Justice Dimgba, being the only one sitting as the Federal High Court’s vacation judge in Abuja.
On the side of Nigerians, they continue to be grateful to the Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Change Regime, which makes it possible so far for electorate votes to count.
The DEFENDER had on July 14 reported a respondent saying that, “I hope you remember that Dino Melaye is not the first Senator to be attempted for recall? They were about three or more in the past but because the party in government at that time, which was the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), only professed ‘power to the people’ without actually allowing people to exercise the power, they knew why they did not allow those recall attempts to succeed.
“But this time that there is Change, that is why all the fights that Melaye and his whole Senate have staged against the will of the people using their institutional “power” as legislature and court did not succeed. It should be a lesson to all political office holders to stop their bad ways and begin to be law abiding by stop looking down on the people who put them in office. It won’t stop there. Even the Saraki that is backing him, his people have listed his sins and have also signified their readiness to recall him. It is now I know democracy is working,” he said.
