But the likely messy outcome of the bid to impeach Al-Makura started manifesting on Wednesday, 30 August, with the directive to Justice Justice Dikko to re-jig members of the impeachment panel after a hurriedly convened sitting by the lawmakers at Karu, a Nassarawa settlement in the suburb of Abuja. “(The) Assembly sat this afternoon in Karu based on a petition received from Musa Danjuma and Isa Abubakar who alleged that the Chief Judge appointed persons of questionable characters into the committee. Some of the members are card-carrying members of PDP and APC,” Mohammed Baba-Ibaku, spokesperson for the House told journalists in Abuja.
He added that one of the panel members is president of GWADECA, an association of the Gwandara ethnic group which Al-Makura belongs to, while another is a close ally of the governor. “We therefore resolved that the Chief Judge should dissolve the committee and appoint fresh members into it. Section 188 (7) of the constitution says the committee cannot sit until the Assembly gives them guidelines,” he said.
This magazine gathered that the instruction to the Chief Judge followed the failure of pressure the lawmakers had mounted on some members who they feared may return a ‘not guilty’ verdict on the allegations against the governor to step down from the panel. Constitutionally, failure of the panel to return a guilty verdict will mean the end of the impeachment process, which can also not be re-enacted for the next six months. But this magazine gathered that the plans of the lawmakers were also frustrated by the unexpected willingness of the governor, not only to appear before the panel, but to vigorously defend himself against the charges leveled against him.
The governor had on 29 August told some groups that paid him a visit during the Eid-el-Fitri celebrations in Lafia, that all the allegations levelled against him were frivolous: “All what they have said about me is absolutely a lie. I will defend myself at the appropriate time. I am accountable to you, not those 20 people. I will defend myself, and all my lawyers are ready to exonerate me.”
Earlier reports indicated that the governor had employed the services of seven senior advocates to put up a robust defence for him before the panel. This, it was learnt, jolted the lawmakers.
A source told this magazine last week that with the way the governor evaded the service of the impeachment notice, the lawmakers had also hoped that he would also shun the panel, like his Adamawa State counterpart. “If the governor had failed to appear, the panel would have had no choice but to report back to the Assembly that he failed to contest the charges and this would have made it possible for him to be declared guilty straightaway,” said the source.
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