Ayorinde Oluokun/Abuja The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, lawmakers in the Nasarawa State House of Assembly were still wondering how they got it wrong as at the time of writing this story last week. With the support of 20 out of 24 members, the lawmakers had thought it would be a matter of time before they succeeded in kicking out Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, the governor of the state, from office when they initiated impeachment proceedings against him on 14 July. After all, their PDP counterparts in Adamawa had also relied on their overwhelming majority in the House of Assembly to kick out Murtala Nyako, the governor of the state, just before then. They obviously didn’t realise that their own cookies may crumble the wrong way. [caption id="attachment_7186" align="alignnone" width="500"] Governor Tanko Al-Makura: impeachment plot fails[/caption] Thus, the implosion of the impeachment plot last Wednesday left the still implacable lawmakers who are still fugitive from the state scratching their heads even as they contemplated their next move. But the unraveling of the impeachment plot is no doubt a relief for the governor and his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. “I think we have been vindicated on our stand that the governor is innocent of the allegations and that the entire exercise was a political witch-hunt by the PDP as part of its grand plan to weaken the opposition in the country,” Lai Mohammed, National Publicity Secretary, APC, said hours after the investigative panel set up by the Nasarawa State Chief Judge, Justice Suleiman Dikko, to investigate the 16-count allegation of misconduct and breaches of the constitution on which the impeachment proceeding against Al-Makura dismissed the charge. The panel, according to Yusuf Shehu Usman, its chairman, dismissed the allegations following the refusal of the House of Assembly to back the charge up with evidence. Indeed, Usman said, the House did not present “any iota of evidence” in support of the 16 allegations against the governor. While reading the verdict of the panel, Usman noted that in criminal proceedings, the onus lies on the person who made the allegations to prove culpability and that since the state’s lawmakers had failed to prove the allegations, the panel had no choice but to dismiss the allegations. In the same vein, the panel also held that in civil cases, the onus to prove was on the person who would lose if no evidence was led and that since the House of Assembly failed to provide evidence in support of the allegation, the House stood to lose. “Having considered and dismissed each allegation for lack of proof, having found no merit in the allegations, the panel hereby dismisses all the allegations. “In accordance with the constitution, the panel will send its report to the Nasarawa State House of Assembly,” Usman said, thus bringing to an end the sitting of the panel which began on a rancorous note with the appearance of counsel to the lawmakers, Ocha Ulegede. The lawyer had told members of the panel that he came to appear before them in protest, following a fresh hearing notice issued to the House of Assembly members after they failed to appear to substantiate the 16 allegations levelled against the governor the previous day. Ulegede told the panel that his clients chose to boycott the sitting of the panel because its constitution did not follow laid down constitutional provisions. He specifically cited the inclusion of two card-carrying members of the PDP and a civil servant as members of the investigative panel as wrong. “We have evidence that Alhaji Muhammad Sambo Keana and Alhaji Abdulahi Usman Galadima are registered members of the PDP, while Reverend Joel Galadima, also a member of the panel, is a public servant who still received a salary as at July,” said Ulegede. The legal practitioner said the inclusion of the three identified members was against Section 188(5) of the constitution, which excluded members of the public service, legislature and political parties from impeachment panels. He also argued that the panel lacked the power to prepare its rules of procedure, adding that only the state’s House of Assembly had the power to do so under the constitution, while insisting that everything done pursuant to the illegal rules of procedure amounted to a nullity. “Based on these grounds, we have decided not to take part in the proceedings. We hereby apply to take our leave,” the lawyer said. But the panel decided that it had no powers to address the issue he complained about. But counsel to the governor, Chief Noruka Udechukwu (SAN), said that, having satisfied itself with the evidence that the House of Assembly was served with the notice of hearing, the panel had no choice but to dismiss the allegations in its entirety. He averred that by their action, the lawmakers had abandoned the impeachment notice and the allegations against the governor. The senior advocate also noted that the failure to produce the rules of procedure for the panel before calling on the CJ to constitute the investigating panel was a failure on the part of the lawmakers which had rendered the proof of the allegations in the impeachment notice impossible. “Section 188(8) enjoins you to make a report to the House that the allegation has not been proved. I urge you to submit in that report that the allegations have not been proved,” Udechukwu concluded his submission. “Having failed to lead evidence, the panel hereby dismisses the allegations. It is the House of Assembly that by a motion asked the chief judge to set up a panel to investigate the allegations contained in the impeachment notice. The chief judge complied. The panel was set up. The panel then gave the House a hearing notice. It failed to appear,” Usman said, while acceding to the request to dismiss the case. But though they failed to say how they were going to go about it, members of the state Assembly insisted after last Tuesday’s ruling that the impeachment plot was not over. “We will not act outside the constitution, we will make our decision known soon,” Muhammed Baba Ibaku, chairman, House Committee on Information and Security, told journalists in Abuja. He however dismissed speculations that the lawmakers would seek redress in court. “We don’t have the space to go to court, the constitution has laid down rules for this process. The constitution even states that the court should not interfere with our processes,” he stated. But the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Al-Makura on Public Affairs, Alhaji Abdulhamid Kwara, advised the PDP to accept the verdict of the panel in good faith in the interest of overall development of the state. “What the state needs is peace so that the governor can focus on developing the state as he has been doing rather than unnecessary distractions coming from aggrieved politicians who are hell bent on causing crises in the state,” he said, while calling on the President, security agencies and well-meaning Nigerians to call members of the PDP to order so as to avoid a breakdown in law and order in the state. PDP members of Nassarawa Assembly had protested when Justice Sulaiman Dikko heeded their order to set up a panel to probe different allegations of gross misconduct and financial impropriety and breach of oath of office against al-Makura. The blood-baying lawmakers had asked the Chief Judge to reconstitute the panel which had Usman as chairman, and Mohammed Sabo Keana, a former secretary to the state government, Reverend Joel Galadima, Alhaji Abdul Usman, Samuel Chaku, Mohammed Sani Usman and Pastor Daniel Chaga as members, on the claim that some of the personalities were associates of Al-Makura. 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. But the state government declared the sitting of the PDP lawmakers as illegal, having been convened outside of the recognised chambers of the Assembly. It also described the order asking the CJ to reconstitute the panel as unconstitutional: “If the lawmakers are aggrieved with the compliance of the state Chief Judge with the provision of Section 188, sub-section 5, the right thing to do is for the House to go to the court of law to challenge the composition of the seven- man panel,” Abdulhammid Kwarra said at a press conference in Lafia in reaction to the lawmakers’ directive. Also, APC had supported the stand of the state governor, as it described the directive for reconstitution of the panel as “unreasonable, unconstitutional and way too late”. Lai Mohammed, APC national publicity secretary, in a statement issued in Abuja on 31 July also noted that the lawmakers were either ignorant of the provisions of the constitution concerning impeachment in making the order or were just desperate. The APC spokesperson said what Section 188 (5) of the Constitution required is that the members of the panel should, in the opinion of the CJ, be persons of integrity. “It is important to point out to the desperate lawmakers that the key words in that section is that the Chief Judge must appoint persons WHO IN HIS OPINION (emphasis ours) are of unquestionable integrity. At this juncture, it is neither the opinion of the Speaker nor that of the legislators that counts; it is the opinion of the Chief Judge,” said APC. “Therefore, neither the Speaker, the lawmakers nor the Chief Judge can dissolve the panel at this stage, and none of them can stop the impeachment process. Once the Chief Judge has appointed the panel under section 188 (5), he becomes functus officio, that is, he has no further powers on the matter. “This is the situation of things at present and the lawmakers can only await the report of the panel,” it said. This magazine however gathered that apart from the impeachment, the lawmakers are also exploiting the option of using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission against the governor. It was gathered that the lawmakers are compiling a petition which may be sent to the anti-graft agency to convince it to place embargo on the accounts of the state with commercial banks, just like it happened before the impeachment of Nyako. But in a countermove, Governor Al-Makura is also said to be ready to submit shady financial deals of the lawmakers to EFCC.