A Chieftain of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kalu Kalu, has said the 27 lawmakers from Rivers State who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC have lost their seats in parliament.
He explained that the law states that an elected official can only defect from his party to another during his term if there is a leadership struggle within the party.
The lawyer explained that there is no division within the PDP.
Kalu revealed this in an interview on Arise News on Tuesday.
Kalu also affirmed his membership with the APC, saying his affiliation with the PDP is purely a lawyer-client relationship.
Speaking on the case of the lawmakers who defected in Rivers State, Kalu said, “The proviso in section 109-1g is clear that if there is a division in the party upon which the member came to the house in question, that the person has the right to move to another political party. The question here now is, is there a division or a split in PDP? And the answer is clear that there is no division in PDP.
“Yesterday, PDP came out with a position that they are against what happened in Rivers State, and today, there is no conflicting or dissenting opinion from another quarter or from another group in PDP saying that what honourable Debo said is not the position of PDP. Even in Rivers State as we talk, there is only one PDP in Rivers State, and there is no other faction of PDP in Rivers State. At the national level, there is only one PDP at the national level.”
Kalu further said, “It is only when there is a leadership crisis, when there is a split in the leadership of the party at the national level that you can now say that there is a split. But as we speak today, PDP is conducting its affairs without any faction in anywhere in the country, precisely at the national level and at the Rivers State level. So, there’s no split, there’s no division in the PDP, and I stand to be quoted wrong.
“The 27 affected constituencies, their seats are already vacant, going by the provision of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as uttered… Once you defect from the political party from which you won election, to another political party before the expiration of the house upon which you were elected, that you automatically lose that seat. So, there is no need for any institution to declare that seat vacant.”
He said that all INEC needs to do is to begin the process of conducting bye-elections into the empty seats.
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