The membership of the ECOWAS Parliament and the Pan-African Parliament as well as the National Assembly (NASS), and collecting emoluments from all, is threatening the seats 40 members at the legislative arm.
Some of the legislators, who may be forced to vacate their seats for concurrently holding memberships of the three organisations include the deputy senate president, Jibrin Barau, who is also the Acting Speaker of ECOWAS sixth legislature; Ali Ndume, Abiodun Olujimi, Smart Adeyemi, Tolu Odebiyi, and Mshelia Haruna, among others.
The Association of Legislative Drafting and Advocacy Practitioners (ALDRAP) has filed a suit at a Federal High Court, Abuja, against the legislators.
ALDRAP is a non-governmental organisation that seeks to promote transparency and accountability in governance through public interest litigations, advocacy, and policy engagements.
In an earlier formal complaint, the body called on the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, to declare the seats of the affected lawmakers vacant for belonging to multiple Parliament at the same time and collecting multiple emoluments.
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When Mr Akpabio failed to act on the complaint, the body served a pre-action notice to the Senate President and copied the Clerk of the National Assembly, indicating their readiness to seek judicial redress if the call was not heeded.
In the letter dated 8 April and signed by its secretary, Tonye Clinton Jaja, the body warned that if the leadership of NASS failed to comply with its request within seven working days from the date of the letter, it shall commence a lawsuit to seek the interpretation at a court of law.
In the alternative, the body offered to draft for enactment two Bills for the domestication of both the international instruments establishing both the ECOWAS Parliament and the Pan-African Parliament respectively.
They insisted that the practice of serving both bodies violated section 68(1) of the 1999 Constitution and Article 18, Supplementary Act of the ECOWAS Parliament, 2017, which prohibited a serving member of another Parliament from serving with it and collecting emoluments on both ends.
In its prayers before the Federal High Court, Abuja, ALDRAP prayed the court to determine whether having regard to Section 68 (1) (a) of the 1999 Constitution (as altered), any member of the National Assembly who wished to take a seat at the ECOWAS Parliament and/or the Pan-African Parliament, ought to first resign from the National Assembly.
Other prayers in the group’s originating summon included: “In the alternative, whether having regard to Section 12 of the 1999 Constitution (as altered), the provisions of the ECOWAS Parliament legislation, which allocates 35 seats to Nigeria, has not yet become legally operative within Nigeria, considering that both the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly have not subjected the said parliament to the legislative procedure prescribed under Section 12.
“An order of this Court directing the 5th defendant (Clerk of the National Assembly) to immediately discontinue the payment of salaries and all forms of remuneration to all the 40 lawmakers who were recently inaugurated as either members of the Sixth Assembly of the ECOWAS Parliament and/or the Pan-African Parliament.”
The group also prayed the court to order the 6th defendant (INEC) to immediately conduct bye-elections within 30 days from the date of the vacancy to fill all 40 vacant seats at the National Assembly.
ALDRAP’S major argument is that, following the letter and spirit of Section 68 (1) of the 1999 Constitution, it is a distraction and disservice to the constituents of the 40 legislators in question, whom they elected to represent their federal constituencies, to abandon them and go and function as legislators of the ECOWAS Parliament and the Pan-African Parliament respectively.
Inauguration of ECOWAS Parliament
Recall that the Chairman of The Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS, President Bola Tinubu had, on 4 April, inaugurated the Sixth Legislature of the ECOWAS Parliament following the end of the Fifth Legislature on 8 March 2024.
The inaugural session of the Sixth Legislature was convened by the Chair of The Authority, pursuant to Article 28 of the Supplementary Act on the Enhancement of the Powers of the ECOWAS Parliament of 2016.
The ceremony formally marked the commencement of the business of the legislature, and saw the swearing-in of 97 members of the new legislature at the seat of Parliament in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria.
While delivering the opening speech of the inaugural session, Mr. Tinubu pledged his support for the enhancement of powers of the Community Parliament and the establishment of direct universal suffrage processes for the election of its members.
Following the inauguration, members of the ECOWAS Parliament (The House of Representatives of the Peoples of the Community) subsequently elected members of the new Bureau to exercise its function as the governing organ of the Sixth Legislature of the Community Parliament.
The members of the new Bureau included First Deputy Speaker, Jibrin Barau (Nigeria), Second Deputy Speaker, Adjaratou Traore Coulibaly (Cote d’Ivoire), Third Deputy Speaker, Alexander Afenyo-Markin (Ghana) and Fourth Deputy Speaker, Billay Tunkara (Gambia).
Meanwhile, Mr Jibrin, leader of the Nigerian delegation and Deputy President of Nigeria’s Senate, is currently serving as Acting Speaker of the Sixth Legislature pending the election of a substantive Speaker of the Parliament.
The position of substantive speaker of the Parliament, allocated to the Republic of Togo, remains vacant as all members of the Togolese delegation to the Community Parliament were absent at the inaugural session.
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