Taiwo Popoola
The House of Representatives has passed a motion to remove the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Umar Danladi.
This comes after a motion moved by the Majority Leader of the House, Julius Ihonvbere (APC, Edo), who cited Section 17(3) of the Fifth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution.
Constitutional requirement stipulates that Danladi could only be removed by a two-thirds majority of the 360 members of the House.
The House of Representatives has concurred with the Senate on the removal of the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, Umar Danladi.
This resolution was a sequel to a motion moved by the Majority Leader of the House, Julius Ihonvbere, on Tuesday.
Ihonvbere’s motion asked the House to invoke Section 17(3) of the Fifth Schedule of the 1999 constitution. He listed some of the offences of the CCT chairman, including a public brawl with a security guard at the Banex Plaza Shopping Complex in Abuja.
“Aware of the conduct of the Chairman, Code of Conduct Tribunal, who recently engaged in a public brawl with a security guard at the Banex Plaza Shopping Complex, which necessitated an invitation from the Senate Committee on Ethics, Code of Conduct, and Public Petitions, and after his first appearance, where he admitted to having been involved in the brawl, he refused to attend subsequent sittings, thereby frustrating the efforts of the Committee to investigate the allegations against him,” the motion read.
Ihonvbere, in the motion, stated that Danladi Umar’s removal “seems to be the only way out to safeguard the sacred image of the Code of Conduct Tribunal, in line with the resolution of the 10th National Assembly to uphold the rule of law and sustain the ideals of corporate governance structure in Nigeria”.
Following the presentation of the motion, a constitutional point of order was raised by Mansur Soro that the House is not following the right procedure, noting that President Bola Tinubu ought to have written a letter to the House requesting the removal of the CCT chairman.
However, he was ruled out of order by the Speaker Tajudeen Abbas.
When the motion was put to vote, the “ayes” had it.
It would be recalled that a similar motion was moved, and passed in the Senate.
However, the resolution by the Senate was knocked by senior lawyers because of an error as the Senate used Section 157 of the Constitution, instead of Section 17(3) of the Fifth Schedule of the 1999 Constitution.
the Senate had last week also recommended Danladi’s removal, following a motion moved by Opeyemi Bamidele, the majority leader.
