The travail of Dino Melaye, senator in a stretcher

The arraignment of Dino Melaye, a senator representing Kogi West senatorial district, on a stretcher in Abuja and Lokoja in a terrible health condition has raised question whether there is indeed respect for human life in the country.

Granted that the law stipulates that no one is above the law, but citizens should not be taken to court in precarious health.

Femi Falana, a human rights activist and senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) among many other Nigerians have condemned the development.

Falana said: “The arraignment of Senator Dino Melaye on a stretcher in Abuja and Lokoja is unacceptable in a civilised society. It is particularly degrading and humiliating as it violates the fundamental right to the dignity of his person guaranteed by Section 34 of the Constitution and Section 7 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015.”
Those who have followed Melaye’s

challenges easily allege that what is happening to him was a carefully scripted plan to gag and demystify him.

Melaye has been in the eye of the storm following his unwavering support for Bukola Saraki, Senate president, whose emergence was against the zoning arrangement of their party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

His larger-than-life posturing may have pitted him against the powers that be.

While he is seen as an enemy of the Executive arm of government, he is also in a war of attrition with the governor of his state, Yahaya Bello, who is a die-hard supporter of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In fact, Governor Bello is reputed to have clinched the Kogi State power stool on the huge support of the President.

Melaye was also said to have stretched his support base very thin in the APC by taking on whosever that challenged Saraki. He once dared the National Leader of the party, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, when he clashed with Senator Oluremi, Tinubu’s wife.

Sometime ago, Melaye alleged that assassins were sent to his house and he suspected his governor.

But in a twist of events, a group of armed youths were arrested and paraded by the police, and it was said that they made confessional statements that they were “working” for Melaye.

While the boys were put in jail in Kogi, some of them allegedly escaped; a development that raised the suspicion that it was masterminded by Melaye. The police consequently declared the senator wanted. He was accused of gun-running and dragged to court.

Before this time, the senator’s constituency in Kogi West was said to have grown tired of his alleged ineffective representation and decided to recall him.

Bags containing signatures of electorates from the senatorial district indicating their willingness to recall him were sent to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Melaye had ran to court to stop the process. He was able to buy time for a moment, until the court ruled that the process could go ahead.

INEC had fixed verification of the signatures penultimate Saturday; at the end of the day, Melaye survived what some people described as an orchestrated plan to destroy him.

It was found that those who allegedly signed the signatures refused to come forward to identify themselves which fuelled suspicion in some quarters that the entire process was fraudulent and at best shambolic.

The Nigerian Police, in their bid to arrest Melaye and forcefully move him to Kogi to face prosecution over the allegation of gun-running, alleged that the senator tried to jump out of the moving van conveying him and seriously injuring himself in the process.

Although he is evidently ill and unable to walk, the police have continued to move him about in a stretcher to face judgment, a treatment that has continued to elicit wide condemnation.

His colleagues at the National Assembly are mortally shocked that such a treatment could be meted to a serving senator, and expressed concern over some perilous developments in the country.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, urged restraint and condemned the decision of the police to treat Melaye shabbily.

The botched recall exercise of Melaye, could be described as political defeat for Governor Bello and the ruling APC, the party under which he was elected.

Melaye is also accused by the highest echelon of the APC of being too critical of the party-led Federal Government and his too much attachment to the

leadership of the Senate which emerged contrary to the plans of APC, a development that elicited calls for his immediate sack through the recall exercise.

However, the Kogi West Senator triumphed as out of the 189,870 signatories to the petition for Melaye’s recall, only 18 ,742 were verified by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

This number represents 5.3percent of the total number of registered voters in the senatorial district and therefore, did not satisfy the requirement of the law demanding a simple majority of the signatures of voters registered to vote in the constituency.

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 in Section 69 provides for the recall of senators and members of the House of Representatives which requires that “a petition signed by more than half of the persons registered to vote in the member’s constituency, alleging that they have lost confidence in that member, be presented to the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission”.

Thereafter, “the petition is subjected to a referendum conducted by INEC and if it is approved by a simple majority of voters registered in that member’s constituency, the member stands recalled. In-between the presentation of the petition and referendum, a verification of the signatures of the petitioners is conducted by INEC.

“For the verification to succeed, 50percent plus one of the registered voters in the constituency need to be verified. The provision for recall of legislators is based on the sovereignty of the people affirmed in Section 14 (2) (a) of the Constitution to wit; that

Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through the constitution derives all its powers and authority.

Reports from the recall exercise revealed that there was a very low turnout and the constituents were not in any mood to recall their senator as they were also unaware of the sins of Melaye that would have led to the commencement of the recall process, ab initio.

Eze Onyekpere of the Centre for Social Justice noted that the constituents simply stayed away and went about their normal routine business. Again, he alleged that the media reported “fictitious and forged signatures and names of dead persons affixed to the recall petition by its promoters.”

“The constitution does not anticipate or provide that signatures would be forged or the names of dead persons be inserted in a petition to recall a serving senator. It is imperative to state that forgery is a criminal offence for which the offenders should face stiff penalties and sanction.

“It is the expectation that the police and INEC should proceed with the same rigour and vigour with which they moved to recall the senator and go after the culprits who forged the signatures and bring them to book.

“For constituents to lose confidence in a legislator, there must have been some misdeeds or offences committed by the legislator. Maybe, they mismanaged constituency project money and converted the same to their personal use. Or they have committed a grievous offence known to the law.

“Alternatively, they sleep in the chambers of the Senate and fail to bring up issues of importance to the constituency in the Senate. Also, the member has been docile without sponsoring appropriate bills and motions.

“None of these could be attributed to Dino Melaye in his representation of his people. I do not want to believe that people can make up their mind to recall a legislator for the fun of it to justify the number of petitioners who started the process.

Onyekpere wondered if it was possible for about 95percent of the persons who signed up for Melaye’s recall to change their mind at the same time, which he said would be magical and so drastic, and would not have been the case in the logical and natural sequence of human action?

He said that there must be a limit to the misuse of executive and state powers to prove a point which has nothing to do with the interest of the people as recalling a senator is not a tea party and that the Kogi drama should serve as a lesson to those who want to have their way through forgery.

Reacting to the outcome of the futile exercise, Melaye through his media aide, Gideon Ayodele, described it as victory for democracy, the reflection of the will of people of Kogi West and the entire state which will further spur him to continue to provide purposeful representation and attract dividends of democracy to them.

“Despite his current travails, his inability to mobilise his constituents and also deploy agents to monitor the signature verification exercise, countless number of supporters volunteered to do it without minding the associated risks posed by the Kogi State Government,” Ayodele said.

James Kwen, Abuja