Staging a protest is not an impeachment process

I watched with so much shame and disgust yesterday how some of the members of the Senate proudly staged a protest and walked out of the plenary session in lieu of impeaching the president over the insecurity challenge amongst other struggles the nation has been facing.

It is quite shameful and I say this with so many tears in my eyes that the lawmakers have been reduced to mere protesters and resorted to protest instead of manning up and carrying out their statutory duty of impeaching the president as constitutionally provided as at when the need arises. It is far long overdue. I boldly say that in a sane political clime, the president ought to have been impeached long ago, by whatever standard anyone wants to measure or argue it.

All the lawmakers ended up doing yesterday was media gimmicks, tomfoolery, a display of ignorance, and an outstanding show of shame with so much pride. It was rightly described in a response by the Presidential spokesperson that their act of yesterday was “childish” and I totally agree.

There’s no constitutional provision for impeachment procedure known as a protest or walk out. So some of the lawmakers walking out and staging a protest only reduced them to toothless bulldogs that can only bark but can never bite.

The procedure for impeachment is duly provided for in S.143 of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria. For benefit of the doubt, I will represent the step-by-step process of impeaching the president as provided by the constitution Incase the honorable lawmakers have forgotten.

According to the constitutional provision; the first step in the impeachment process of the president is a written notice of an allegation of gross misconduct against the person of the president which is duly signed by at least 1/3 members of the National Assembly (Senate and House of Representatives inclusive).

The senate president must within 7 days serve the president with the notice of the allegation and every other member of the National Assembly must be served a copy of the notice.

When the President and each member of the National Assembly have been served, the National Assembly must within 14 days resolve if the allegation against the president is to be investigated or not.

If the National Assembly resolves that the allegation against the president is to be investigated, the Senate president must within seven days request the Chief Justice of Nigeria to set up a seven-man panel to investigate this allegation(s).

The panel is given three months to investigate this allegation and their findings are to be reported back to the National Assembly. During the process, the president has every right to appear before the panel and defend himself in person or through his legal representative(s).

When the panel reports that allegations against the president have been proven or substantiated, the National Assembly will consider the report and adopt the report.

Once the report of the panel is adopted the president stands to be removed from office and ceases to hold or occupy the office of the president from the moment the report is adopted.

From the processes highlighted, it is crystal clear that the impeachment process of the president in Nigeria is quite stringent and cumbersome, hence the reason why the lawmakers should stop playing around and initiate the process if they really want to impeach the Mr. President (which is long overdue) because they have a really long way to go.

In nowhere in the constitution is staging a protest or walking out of the plenary session by lawmakers or giving the president six weeks ultimatum is referred to as an impeachment process in the constitution or any other Nigerian law. The lawmakers should cease the gimmicks and stop making fools of themselves and follow the procedures laid down by the constitution if they mean the business of impeaching the president.