A Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Femi Falana has described the March 8 decision of the Federal High Court Abuja, which sacked Ebonyi state governor, David Umahi and his deputy from office as sound and commendable.
Falana, who spoke from Accra, Ghana as host ChannelsTV’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, said the court’s decision was like no other before it.
“What Gov Umahi and his deputy should have done honourably was to resign when the left the mandate of the party that voted them into power rather than contesting the matter.
“You cannot get a mandate from the people who voted a party and transfer it to another whenever you wish without legal consequences. That is not just.
“It is our wish that the Supreme Court would uphold this sound judgment and bring an end to the annoying and irresponsible political prostitution in Nigeria that is not helping the growth of our democracy,” the lawyer said.
He faulted the views of some lawyers who argued that the judgment was at variance with the law on how a governor should be removed from office.
According to him, such views were not only laughable but also borne out of ignorance, stressing that Umahi and his deputy ought to have resigned from office after their defection to a different party from the one on whose platform they were elected into office.
“The case is the first time anybody has ever approached the court for an interpretation of the mandate of an executive and the transferability to another party, therefore, the court’s decision was like no other before it.”
The legal icon reasoned that all the people making reference to the matter of Atiku Abubakar defecting to another party as vice president should know that the issues was not the same with that of Umahi.
“In the case of Umahi, it is the holder of the mandate that decamped and that means the government entirely moved to another political party.
“In Atiku’s case, the vice president left, but the ultimate holder of the mandate, the president did not transfer the mandate of the party that elected him to another.
“It was still the government of PDP led by President Olusegun Obasanjo. This is unlike Umahi who shipped totally out of the party that gave him the mandate.”
Asked about the constitutional right of the governor of Ebonyi state to freedom of association, Falana said that such rights do not also endow Umahi with the rights to take away the rights of over 320,000 people of the state that voted for him and for a party.
He also argued that the law makes it clear that the mandate which an elected public officer holds belongs to the political party platform on which such candidate contested for election.
Falana also disagreed with those who argued that the judgment breached the constitutional provisions on how to remove a governor from office.
“Did the constitution ever envisage that a governor would ever transfer the mandate that brought him to office to another party?” He asked.
“No constitution anywhere in the world captures everything and therefore there must be interpretations and expansion.
“When Peter Obi questioned his mandate and tenure, was it in the constitution? It was not there, but the court found it proper to interpret and that became rightly the law.
“That a governor should be in office for four years from the day he is sworn into office, and not counted from the day the person who was wrongly declared winner of election came to power,” he said.
