Speaker Gbajabiamila’s Constitutional Subpoena Powers By Prof. Mike Ikhariale

There have been of recent ill-informed and pejorative comments about the openly expressed frustration by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, over the non-compliance with the summons that he issued to the nation’s military service chiefs over the renewed insurgent activities in the Northeastern part of the country. As long as the invitation was not ultra vires his office, whatever blame arising from the development should rather go to those who irresponsibly undermined lawful invitations instead of the Speaker who lawfully issued them. We should not forget that the office of Speaker of the House of Representatives is a constitutional one which carries a great deal of policy, legislative and administrative responsibilities.

In the older jurisdictions, the Speaker is usually the 3rd in the line of succession to the presidency; it is very much the same here excepting that the Senate President is ahead for that purpose. So, the speakership is not one of those offices that could be so glibly spoken of in condescending tones under any enlightened circumstance because it is an office with a great deal of institutional aura and political significance, never mind its seeming debasement at the states level by politicians without adequate constitutional education.

Yes, over the years, we have witnessed some avoidable jurisdictional overreaches exemplified by series of ill-informed attempts by the legislature to casually summon members of the other co-equal branches of government in the guise of “investigation” and how frequently that they were completely ignored. I had course to write about the development in a piece entitled “THE LIMITS OF LEGISLATORS SUBPOENA POWERS” on this page when, in a fit of legislative madness, the Dogara-led House purportedly “summon” the President of the Republic for “questioning” under a bogus power to “investigate” without looking closely at the limits of subpoena powers.

In the instant case, however, inviting heads of military agencies to Parliament is well within the powers of the House, if for nothing, but for its constitutional control over the purse of the nation much of which has being going to the military lately. It was therefore proper for the Speaker to express some disgust over their undisciplined “no show”. But knowing the challenges involved in such delicate cases, the Speaker, instead of committing them for ineffectual “contempt”, decided to discuss their contumacy with their boss, Mr. President, and it is obvious that the approach worked as they all eventually turned up or humbly tendered apologies, where necessary, at the adjourned date and time.

Every Nigerian has a stake in the preservation of our system of government based on separation of powers and in doing so, we must also guide against a situation where that hollowed principle is turned into a tool for flexing institutional muscles, promoting disharmony in government or confusion. What should guide the operators is however whatever is in the best interest of our democracy. So, what took place on Friday the 20th of September, 2019 at the House committee’s hearing between the Speaker and the military brass was squarely a constitutional process and subsequently trying to spin it out of context is nothing but an invitation to chaos. The office of Speaker, being a constitutional one, must source its power and authority from the same Constitution and, in some cases, parliamentary practices and conventions. It is never the occasion for unnecessary rivalry with the other co-equal branches of government. What is more, the powers of a speaker in a constitutional democracy are quite different from those in a parliamentary democracy as they are usually coterminous with the designated powers of the particular Parliament.

While Speakers are expected to be neutral while presiding over debates, it is generally understood that modern speakers tend to work cooperatively with their parties, usually the ruling party. The last National Assembly had a Speaker that was, for all intents and purposes, an “opposition Speaker” who have to, as matter of survival, devise multiple strategies to stay afloat. ‘Gbaja, being a member of the ruling party, on the contrary, has a different operational terrain altogether.

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The modern speakership basically emerged in Britain in 1642 when Charles 1 reportedly marched into Parliament and demanded the immediate surrender of five parliamentary leaders on a charge of treason. Rather than succumb, the Speaker, William Lenthall, reportedly fell on his knee and said: “May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what Your Majesty is pleased to demand of me”. His humble but clearly defiant response “have since defined the Speaker’s role in relation to the House and the Crown”, i.e., a buffer between Parliament and the Crown.

This hitherto precarious situation was highlighted in a publication of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, November, 2017 thus: “The Speaker has been part of the British parliamentary system since 1377. In the beginning, the Speaker was responsible for carrying messages from Parliament—often complaints and grievances—to the King or Queen. Sometimes the monarch was not pleased with the messages and as many as nine Speakers met a violent death. This explains why Speakers elected today pretend to be reluctant to take the Speaker’s Chair and must be dragged by their colleagues to the front of the Legislative Chamber.”

Today’s dominant constitutionalism has seen to the end of all that. The ongoing Brexit row in Britain where Speaker John Bercow refused to comply with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s promptings to halt further debates on whether or not Parliament can influence the Brexit process is evidence of the ‘new deal’. Hear him: “If I have been remotely ambiguous so far, let me make myself crystal clear. The only form of Brexit that we have, whenever that might be, will be a Brexit that the House of Commons has explicitly endorsed.” By his loyalty to the House instead of to the Prime Minister, the has Speaker successfully altered the trajectory of the Brexit process, more so, as the UK Supreme Court confirmed yesterday that Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament was unlawful.

There is a myth trending within the primitive Nigerian political environment suggesting that Parliament is supreme whereas the only thing that is supreme within our juridical cosmos is the Constitution. One of the lingering ironies of contemporary Nigeria’s partisan democratic practice is that people who know little to nothing about constitutional processes are daily polluting the juristic space with wholly incorrect and misleading pronouncements, putting their selfish sentiments and agendas over and above logic, facts and commonsense about what is and what is not constitutional almost the same way that Fake News is undermining facts and scholarly integrity nowadays. Deliberately misconstruing settled constitutional principles by falsely re-interpreting them through overtly tainted partisan prisms for political purposes is directly undermining the substratum of our constitutional democracy in which Parliament is considered a critical palladium.

There is nothing that Speaker Gbajabiamila has done so far that would warrant the unbridled but orchestrated attacks on him and his office other than for nefarious ulterior ends. A Speaker is as strong as the Constitution, political realities and his own personality allow. Perhaps the greatest source of his power is the understanding that the people will always stand behind him whenever he is confronted by unconstitutional encroaching tendencies of the other branches of government. That expectation would significantly wane if, for selfish reasons, people proceed to unnecessarily undermine the historical parameters of his powers and prestige. The recent case of Speaker Bercow in England should be illuminating enough for Nigerians.

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