After months of speculations and denials, Governor Bello Muhammed Matawalle of Zamfara State,last Tuesday, formally defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC). As it is usually the case, the governor took with him to the ruling party, some members of the state and federal legislators.
As at last count, THISDAY gathered that all but one member of the state House of Assembly, all senators and six of the seven members of House of Representatives from the state, went with him. Kabiru Yahaya, representing Talata Mafara/Anka federal constituency, is the only state lawmaker, who did not leave the PDP.
The state’s deputy governor, Mahdi Aliyu, also did not join the APC, saying his father brought the party to Zamfara and the family had never belonged to any other party.
While Matawalle’s defection to the APC has brought another round of crisis to the state chapter of the party, the PDP on the other hand whose mandate he ran away with, is calling for his resignation as governor and threatening him with litigation.
The new crisis began at the defection ceremony when the Chairman of the Caretaker Committee of the APC and Governor of Yobe State, Mai Mala Buni, announced the dissolution of the executive council of the party in Zamfara and declared Matawalle as the new leader of the party in the state.
“As of today, Governor Bello Mohammed is the official leader of the party in the state…From now on, Governor Matawalle is the leader of our great party in Zamfara State. You will await further arrangements for new party structure from him,” Buni said as he announced the dissolution of the state executive of the party.
But 24 hours after, former Governor Abdul’aziz Yari and a former senator, Kabiru Marafa, said Buni’s pronouncement of Matawalle as APC leader in the state was not part of the agreement reached before his defection. They said his declaration as their leader in the APC could not stand.
Marafa said: “One thing that we didn’t accept is the statement from Buni that Matawalle is the APC leader in Zamfara, because that was not part of the agreement reached with the APC governors.”
The former senator said pronouncing the governor as APC leader in Zamfara is dubious and unacceptable, revealing that it took the intervention of APC governors, through Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, for Yari to attend the defection ceremony. He said they were told that the event was meant to end every dispute.
“We were only pleaded with by the APC to allow for the defection ceremony in Gusau to hold, for us to become one. Afterwards, there would be further meetings and negotiations. But for someone from Abuja to say he dissolved the APC executives in Zamfara, that cannot happen,” the former lawmaker said.
With Matawalle’s defection, it appears that the old adversaries have now found a common enemy. Ironically, the events that culminated in the governor inheriting the APC victory at the poll were based on the intractable dispute between then governor, Yari and Senator Marafa.
Matawalle was declared governor on May 24, 2019, after the Supreme Court disqualified all the APC candidates over the failure of the APC to conduct valid primaries. The apex court further ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cancel the votes secured by the APC in all the elections and decide the new winners from the remaining valid votes.
Trouble started, when the faction led by Yari conducted primaries for the nomination of the party’s candidates for the 1999 general election, the faction of Yari went to court to challenge the process.
The court eventually decided that the process was invalid. Although APC later presented candidates after the Court of Appeal offered it a brief reprieve, the Supreme Court eventually dashed the party’s hope by declaring its participation in the elections as invalid.
The apex court specifically held that having not conducted valid primaries, in the face of the law, it did not participate in the 2019 elections, where it swept the presidential, governorship and all the federal and state legislative seats, beating PDP candidates to a distant second position.
It is for this reason that the PDP has threatened to go to court to challenge the defection of Matewalle, stating that the electoral mandate was given to the party and not to Matawalle himself.
PDP spokesman, Kola Ologbodiyan, specifically stated that the Supreme Court judgment upon which Matawalle assumed office was clear and unambiguous that it is party that contests election in Nigeria and not the candidate.
His words: “No law allows him to cross over to any other party with the governorship mandate statutorily given to the PDP through the ballot box, as already established by the provision of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and the standing judgment of the Supreme Court.
“A combined reading of Section 221 of the 1999 Constitution as the pronouncements of the Supreme Court in Faleke v. INEC (2016) is clear in holding that it is the political party that stands for election, that votes scored in election belong to the political party and that the candidate nominated to contest at an election by his party acts only as the agent of his party. The PDP hopes that Bello Matawalle as well as members of the National and State Assembly from Zamfara State will note that.”
Having earlier lost Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State and Ben Ayade of Cross River State to to the APC without batting an eyelid, many observers have reasoned that what makes the Matawalle case peculiar is that the Supreme Court in its judgment while installing him as governor, having disqualified the APC, specifically held that “the parties that came second in the elections” should be declared the winners of the elections.
They wonder that if the apex court in its wisdom could hold that the APC did not take part in the 2018 elections, why would the governor make the party benefit from the election it was held it didn’t partake in?
The Falake vs INEC case has a precedence in the Amaechi v INEC (2007), where the Supreme Court first cleared the air on who contests elections in Nigeria between a political party and the candidate.
In the lead judgment delivered in the case in October 2007, Justice George Oguntade while giving reasons for Chibuike Amaechi victory, said without a political party in Nigeria, a candidate cannot contest an election. He held that a good or bad candidate might enhance or diminish the prospect of his party in winning an election but that at the end of the day it is the party that wins or loses an election.
The judge noted: “Without a political party, a candidate cannot contest. The primary method of contest for elective offices is therefore between parties. If as provided in Section 221, it is only a party that canvasses for votes, it follows that it is a party that wins an election. A good or bad candidate may enhance or diminish the prospect of his party in winning but at the end of the day, it is the party that wins or loses an election.”
Justice Pius Olayiwola Aderemi, while concurring the verdict, equally referred to the same section 221, saying: “No association other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election. Flowing from the above provision of the constitution, it is my view that it is the political parties that the electorate do vote for at election time.”
Even though since the judgment was delivered, many Nigerians do not agree with it, arguing that the correct position should be that both the candidate and his political party jointly win or lose an election, so far, the apex court has not reversed itself, making its position the law today.
