Confab: Delegates Want Defecting Govs, Legislators, Others To Lose Seats

The National Conference has resolved that henceforth, any elected public office holder in the country, who defects from the political party on whose platform they got into office to another, would automatically lose the seat.

Delegates at the conference also adopted the recommendation of the Committee on Politics and Governance that Nigeria should adopt a true federal structure with the states operating as the federating units.

Accordingly, the conference proposed stiff penalties for elected public office holders who cross-carpet from one political party to another before their tenure elapses.

It said such elected public office holders who abandoned their parties midway for new ones, were to lose their seats.

The resolution, if passed into law, should bring to rest the gale of defections and the attendant legal cases that come with it.

On practice of true federalism, delegates agreed that states should be empowered to create local government areas as they deem necessary.

However, decision on establishment of the structure, composition, finance and functions of local government councils were suspended pending discussions on the Report of the Committee on Political Restructuring.

On right to self-determination, the conference agreed that the minority groups that wished to exist as separate states and meet the criteria for state creation should be allowed to do so under the instrumentality of the relevant laws and procedures as part of their rights to internal self-determination.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC) are also to come up with ways to ensure that physically challenged persons, especially lepers, are registered and actually allowed to vote in elections.

The above formed parts of the recommendations adopted by the conference during the debate and consideration of the Report of the Committee on Politics and Governance, chaired by Professor Jerry Gana, with Chief Olu Falae as the co-chairman.

The conference also accepted the proposal that bars government from funding political parties, saying they should source for funds instead through membership subscription, levies, donations, investments, sales of party cards and other fund raising activities.

The proposal that unelected chairmen of local governments, often referred to as transition committee chairmen or such unelected representatives at the local government areas, should be sanctioned by withholding the statutory allocations pending the conduct of elections into such local governments was also approved by the conference.