PROCEDURAL STEPS ON ASSESSMENT AND VERIFICATION IN FILING COURT PROCESSES IN THE FCT
HIGH COURT OF THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, ABUJA. PROCEDURAL STEPS
FIVE QUESTIONS ON THE ALLEGED INVASION OF THE NIGERIAN SENATE’S CHAMBER
BEYOND THE BEWITCHING NOISE – BY SAM ELEANYA
Question 1: Was the National Assembly or more specifically, the Senate Chamber invaded on the 18th of April, 2018?
Answe4: Invasion has a meaning. A few unarmed persons successfully making a show of force in a public Chamber placed under the stewardship of over 100 super-paid adults (including ex-Generals, ex-Senior Police Officers, ex-Former-Chief Security Officers of State) without any meaningful resistance does not rise up to an invasion in any sense or context (if they tried it in some other legislative Chambers, say Iran, Russia, US, Turkey or Rivers State, they would be sorry!).
Instead of invasion, try out the word, abdication, or even collusion.
The Senate Chambers is a public space dedicated by Nigerians for use by the Senators on behalf of all Nigerians. It is nice and sometimes functionally expedient to leave the law makers alone with the Mace in that Chamber until when invited formally to come in. But it does not make the chamber their private property enough as to give any of them, or collectively, what is legally recognized as exclusive possessory rights over it as to found a ground for success in a civil action for trespass against any Nigerian on premises.
There is no part of our criminal law I know of that places criminal liability on a non-legislator for poking his/her head or leg, inside the Chamber without a formal invitational motion passing an “Aye” for him/her to come in. So, strictly speaking, stripped of all the political nonsense (APC and PDP), there is nothing invasive (in the sense being made out) about going in (or running) inside the chambers unarmed (that is, except the human arm now qualifies under ‘arms’).
Therefore, something can be said for the failure of security arrangement at the Senate Chamber. And it is an indictment on the Senate – not the Senate-Chamber-Mace joyriders. As already indicated, that chamber is a public space. The extent of exclusivity accorded it at any point in time has been delegated to the leadership of the National Assembly, by the Nigerian People to determine and enforce. Theirs is the latitude to steward the extremely fluid licensing regime associated with public spaces like the National Assembly: a place where the public one minute is welcome and the next minute could be required to step out for the legislators to have an executive or exclusive session. The duty to determine such sessions, secure their integrity without impugning the dignity of the public in premises is at all times on the National Assembly.
Therefore, a breach of those protocols is on the National Assembly’s leadership.
It’s like allowing your roof rust to the point of leaking only to turn around and claim that a heavy rainfall invaded the rug in your parlor. It’s like watching your mosquito net tear and rot only to claim mosquitoes invaded your children. No. Both never did: houses are built to keep those two out regardless of their frequent bids to come in while traveling their natural course or instinct. Both would respect the human eccentricity to erect and enforce barriers to keep the elements and non-human creatures out if a house retains requisite integrity necessary to keep them out. Nonetheless, neither owes any duty not to try and travel a preferred route whenever possible, even if a little push is required. That analogy makes questions like these not unreasonable: Has the National Assembly been making budgetary allocations for the security of the Senate and paying them over, as usual, to ghost security providers or have they been enlisting police men on the ghost roster of the Nigerian Police Force? Those ought to be the real questions that the bunch of mace-happy joy-riders helped Nigerians expose.
In addition, in light of recent tragedies in Nigeria, there is something insidious and frightening when unarmed men can overwhelm the Senate Chambers the way those few men did. it reminds one of how low we have fallen as ‘men’ everywhere. The success of that overwhelming was eerily similar to how herdsmen have been overwhelming villages across the country -with the only exception being that these were unarmed men at the Senate Chamber (no one has claimed otherwise even if they would like to).
Question 2: Was any Senator kidnapped during the hoopla?
Answer: No. I have listened to the fantastic tale by the so-called ‘kidnapped’ Senator. His melodramatic ‘tale’ was no more than that of a fear-ravaged man, unhinged by an imagined prospect of present and grave danger, jumping into a supposed get-away vehicle that turned out not to be his own. And then jumping out again on realizing that the real possessors of the vehicle didn’t look well-paid enough to be Senators, even if they were carrying the original Senate Mace to prove one of them could, in fact, be the ‘Senate President’.
A valid question could be asked: was that Senator in chambers when the mace was taken or was he perhaps playing truant and so didn’t know what had happened only to suffer the fate that ultimately catches up with truants everywhere? It is telling that the Senators in chambers had no similar tale. In fact, they continued with proceedings with a substitute mace in a strange show of ‘strength’. There can be no disputing this: that a person is not kidnapped if he jumps into a train heading in the opposite direction of his intended destination. Especially where he/she retained the freedom to jump out at any time with a few scratches in between. The driver’s failure or inability to stop on request doesn’t make it automatically a wrongful or criminal interference with the person.
Question 3: Was the event treasonous and/or a Coup D’etat?
Answer: If that is what coup looks like, everyone would easily become a coup plotter by locating a pack of self-loving cowards to overwhelm. A mere insult on the manhood of our Senators (as physical weaklings and inept stewards of national monuments) or an alleged heist of a national symbol (with a ready substitute next door) cannot, even if it was preceded by martial music, qualify as treason or coup.
Apart from the clear absence of a hero in the Senate Chambers, there is another disconcerting issue. If that is what treason looks like to our law makers, then Nigerians are all in trouble. It means our Senators are either ignorant, or diabolically dishonest, or maliciously mischievous, or untethered totally from the concept of law: that law for them is a matter determined on a whim starting from one’s self-preservationist interests. None of that is good, at all, at all.
Treason and coup plotting is something Nigeria and Nigerians know too well. We may, in fact, have something to teach the modern world about those. However, the melee in the National Assembly doesn’t qualify.
Just a surface unpacking of what went down that day is enough to show how ridiculous the repeated narrative is. Is it the forceful taking of the mace without the authority of the presiding officer that constitutes the treason/coup or the admittedly unauthorized entry and exit? If you run by those standards alone, too many current and former legislators – including a number in that Chamber – would all be languishing in jail, long terms, for coup plotting and treason. We all have seen too many violent mace snatching by unauthorized persons carrying the authentic badge of elected legislators since 1999 to buy into that narrative.
Question 4: Was the mace stolen or ‘kidnapped’?
Answer: First, kidnapping of the mace is impossible, legally. It ain’t human. Secondly, any serious prosecutor can immediately see how problematic it would be trying to prove the requisite intent necessary to ground stealing. While it may be possible to find some low-grade crimes that could be invoked bordering on negligent treatment of public property, it is almost impossible to see how one could make out a case that proves beyond reasonable doubt that the same set of facts can not also sustain the mere expression of some extreme political viewpoint which may still be protectable under the Constitution of Nigeria.
I suspect that the Senate may find it may need to make a new legislation to be able to ground conviction of some sort for future offenders who decide to play catch with the mace – since our Constitution precludes retrospective operation of new laws.
Question 5: Is it the fault of the Executive arm of government which ‘controls’ the Police for the event of that day?
Answer: That’s totally childish and irresponsible. Across the country, there are assets and estates with far lesser value than the National Assembly complex, in pecuniary and symbolic terms, which owners or stewards have within the present constitutional arrangement and with far lesser resources than is available to the National Assembly fashioned near-impregnable security frameworks to protect the assets or estates under their care. Those non-government platforms daily accomplish their security objectives without discarding the presence and functions of the Nigerian Police. In fact, they actively secure the latter’s presence often at a massive extra cost in terms of providing them with sophisticated equipment, gadgets, training opportunities and payment not available to the police rank and file. They do it because failure is costly and excuse useless. That the Senate leadership does not shrink from that excuse-is-exculpatory narrative (and in fact seems to be relishing its trumpeting) says too much about the character of that chamber’s leadership and membership. It clearly explains the failure to prevent the unsavory event proactively. It could also explain why none of them viewed the event as outrageous enough to try and be a hero on that day by risking a few bruises or worse for the mace on the said day.
CONCLUSION
Something happened in the National Assembly on Wednesday, 18th of April, 2018. It needs to be investigated by serious security professionals. It is very little that the legislators are saying it is. Repeating that talking point is distracting from what the real and credible issues are. And they include:
1. If the chamber of the Senate could be so easily over-run by unarmed men, what hope do Nigerians have? On what basis can we trust in any security arrangement that depends on the statutory and supervisory functions/proficiency of the National Assembly?
2. If our National Assembly – especially its Senate contingent – holds such a low view of the high crimes of coup d’etat and treason, why do they hold such dismissive views of actual crimes against the nation – whether alleged against their principal officers or members of their parties?
3. Shouldn’t Nigerians start demanding that politicians be prosecuted for coup d’etats and treason for those provable and mind-boggling corrupt acts that constitute a demonstrably deadly invasion of the security and wellbeing of Nigerians alive and unborn?
4. Shouldn’t this National Assembly go all out to reassure already skeptical Nigerians that the State of the Nation under their overpaid law making and governance-supervisory functions have not become as vulnerable to defeat from any committed force, security-wise and socioeconomically, as we saw at the Senate?
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