LABOUR Party (LP) has vowed to declare the seats of its defecting members at the House of Representatives vacant.
The party stated this in response to the detection of five members of House of Representatives elected on its platform to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Thursday, December 5.
The party, in a statement by its spokesperson, Obiora Ifoh, shortly after the defection described the action of the lawmakers as unfortunate.
According to the LP, the party has opened a hall of shame “to accommodate the names of those who have so humiliated not only the party but the teeming number of supporters who voted them into office.”
Ifoh said the party would soon petition the Speaker of the House of Representatives to declare the seats of the affected lawmakers vacant, as stipulated in the Constitution.
The LP listed the House of Reps members who defected as Tochukwu Okere (Imo), Donatus Mathew (Kaduna), Bassey Akiba (Cross River), Iyawe Esosa (Edo), and Daulyop Fom (Plateau).
“Section 68(g) of the 1999 Constitution is emphatic on when to defect and what happens when a lawmaker sponsored by a political party decides to jump ship,” the party said.
The LP said since its formation in 2002, the party had been very active in the political scene, having in the past produced a governor and several other elected officers across the board.
It noted that it was in the 2023 general election that it achieved its highest feat under the leadership of Julius Abure, having won a governorship seat, eight Senate and 35 House of Representatives seats as well as numerous state House of Assembly seats.
The party added that it caused a major upset at the presidential election, one that many Nigerians still believed it won, and claimed there had been ‘absolute’ peace in the LP.
“Therefore, no one elected on the ticket of the Labour Party has the constitutional protection to decamp from the party along with the party’s mandate.
“These deserters did not win because of their pedigree or financial muscles but simply because of the ticket they ran on and by the grace of millions of people that vowed to see the end to the ‘entitlement mentality’ of a few cabals,” the party stated.
Recall that as plenary resumed at the House of Representatives on Thursday, December 5, five lawmakers of the LP defected to the APC.
Apart from the five LP lawmakers, Erhiatake Ibori-Suenu (Delta), the daughter of former Delta State Governor James Ibori also dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the APC.
The lawmakers blamed division within their party as the primary reason for their defection.
A reporter with the ICIR
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