Civil rights lawyer and public affairs analyst, Carl Umegboro, has berated Nigeria’s lawmakers over their recurring suspension of fellow elected representatives which he said is gradually becoming a model in the nation’s democracy, describing it as reckless, obnoxious, vexatious, and ultra vires.
In a letter addressed to the President of the Senate Godswill Akpabio; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume, Umegboro frowned at the ongoing commotion in which a lawmaker representing Kogi State in the red chamber, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan was purportedly suspended for 6 months from her official duties.
The legal practitioner described the situation as the height of rascality, inanity, and mischief, arguing that an elected member of the parliament is a representative of his constituency, which means that any attempt to deprive her right to representation is an attack on the constituency itself, not on the member.
Umegboro reasons that depriving a representative of a constituency of space and opportunity in the parliament is akin to removing the entire constituency from the country’s Constitution, which is unacceptable under any guise.
