Senior Nigerian barrister Femi Falana discussed the legal ramifications of 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly defecting from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a recent appearance with Channels Television. Falana emphasized that elected officials ought to run for reelection under their new political platform if they were chosen based on the platform of a political party and subsequently leave it. He did, however, clarify that the legal definition of “conviction” in this context needs a factional split at the federal level rather than a disagreement within party members at the state level.
He pointed out that, currently, the PDP remains a united party without any recognised factions at the national level. Falana referred to a past legal case involving Nyesom Wike, the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, who pursued legal action in a similar context. This legal perspective suggests that, according to Falana, the defection of the 27 lawmakers in Rivers State might not meet the legal criteria for retaining their seats as it lacks the prerequisite of a national-level factional division within the party.
According to him, “If you’re voted for on the basis of the programme of a political party and you abandon the party, you’re advised to go and try your luck by contesting again under the new political platform, but the conviction the law is talking about is not a division within members of a party in a state; it must be at the national level, whereby you can say I belong to faction A or I belong to faction B, but today, the PDP is one. And I remember, I think it was governor… the current minister of the FCT, Nyesom Wike, who went to court.”
