The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is set to institute court cases against federal and state legislators elected on its platform but who defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Section 109(1)(g) of the Nigerian Constitution (1999 as amended) states that: “A member of a House of Assembly shall vacate his seat in the House if, being a person whose election to the House was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that House was elected: Provided that his membership of the latter political party is not as a result of a division in the political party of which he was previously a member, or of a merger of two or more political parties or factions by one of which he was previously sponsored.”
A similar provision governs defection of members of the National Assembly, reports Saturday Tribune.
A top official of the PDP who noted that there was no division in the party to warrant the defections told our correspondent yesterday that the party had activated that provision of the law and would see the cases to a logical conclusion.
He spoke as three senators elected on the platform of the PDP defected to the APC yesterday.
The PDP had recently declared its intention to challenge in court what it described as the trading away of its electoral mandates following the defections of top party members of the party, including governors, to the APC.
This was part of the resolutions reached at a recent meeting of the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) presided over by the acting National Chairman, Ambassador Iliya Damagum, at the PDP national secretariat in Abuja.
The party leadership condemned the mass defections as a betrayal of the people’s mandate and vowed to initiate legal and political steps to reclaim its lost ground.
The APC has recently recorded a steady stream of defections from opposition parties at both federal and state levels, further consolidating its grip on national politics as the Tinubu administration marks its second year in office.
