The senate is strangely claiming patriotic instincts in its ongoing attempt to amend the provisions of the law on the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), both creations of the 1999 constitution. According to the sponsor of the bill, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi (PDP Delta), their effort is to remove the tribunal from the office of the secretary to the government of the federation. According to media reports, the bill has hurriedly scaled the second reading, even as the presiding officer of the senate, Senator Bukola Saraki, is standing trial at the tribunal.
Furthermore, Senator Isa Misau (Bauchi APC) has also sponsored a bill to amend the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA); which has helped put to proper trial, those who have allegedly committed crimes against the Nigerian state. In this group, include Senator Saraki, and other politically exposed persons in the immediate past regime, who are standing trial or have been accused of one infraction or another. With the proposed amendment, those involved would jump at the opportunity to tame the law, which has now enforced criminal trials, instead of the seedy interlocutory applications that was the order of the day, for years.
So we ask, in whose interest is the Nigerian senate making the furious efforts to amend the relevant laws that have brought a modicum of seriousness in holding public officials accountable? With the senate president standing trial before the tribunal, is it not self-serving and a flagrant abuse of privilege for the senate to now seek to scuttle the trial, already sanctioned by the Supreme Court, through legislative intrusion? Unless the mores guiding the senators are different, has it not occurred to them that what they are engaged in was tantamount to an act of bad faith, in the circumstance?
Again, unless the senators are reading a different constitution, our search has not shown the claims made by the senate that the CCB and CCT are under the control of secretary to the Federal Government. Evidently, the provisions of the constitution are unequivocal about the independence of the two bodies. For instance, section 157(1) and (2) provides that the chairman and members of the Code of Conduct Bureau can only be removed by the President acting upon address supported by two-thirds majority of senate, praying that the person be so removed.
Furthermore, by the provisions of the fifth schedule, part 1 paragraph 15(3), the chairman and members of the Code of Conduct Tribunal shall be appointed by the president in accordance with the recommendation of the National Judicial Commission. Section 17(3) also provides for security of tenure, as the chairman or a member of the tribunal can only be removed by the president upon an address supported by each House of the National Assembly.
So, where is the provision guiding the performance of the CCB and CCT that the senate complained about? Even as the senate may lack the ability to unilaterally amend a constitutional provision for a self-serving purpose, we urge Nigerians to keep watch over this senate that has shown a single minded determination to scuttle the legitimate trial of its president.
Unless the senate can show publicly that the proposed amendments are intended to further strengthen the ACJA, which as we earlier argued has brought some sanity to criminal trials in our country; the fear out there is that they are seeking to weaken the act, to serve very narrow interests. With the glaring bad faith so far shown by this senate with a tainted leadership now seeking to make laws to preserve that leadership, Nigerians should get ready to get the senators to account.
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