The Transfer Weekly

Hello to you all, Barka da Sallah in arrears to my Muslim readers, our 1st post-Ramadan Post will be the 1st in our "Transfer Weekly" series, which will be giving insight into transfer moves completed all over the globe, money involved and the expected impact to both the buying/selling club and the market in general. The transfer window has officially been open for 3 weeks now, therefore it has 6 weeks remaining (the official window is from the 1st of July to 31st of August).

This been the 1st post, we will talk about all major transfer from the 1st of July up to date

DONE DEALS
A number of deals were reached before the window was actually open such as the £25m purchase of Depay by Manchester United, the Danny Ings free transfer to Liverpool, to the £17m capture of the Atlético Madrid centre-forward Mario Mandzukic by Juventus.

BOSMAN MOVES
Otherwise known as Free Transfers (this is a case were when a player's contract expires, he is free to agree a contract from any other club, named after the first player to accomplish this Jean-Marc Bosman)
Top on the List of those who have completed free transfers is James Milner

Top 10 Bosman Moves

MAIN MOVES
The club with the most significant purchases in the premier league - in my opinion - has to be Manchester United with the signing of the "Sch duo" (Morgan Schneiderlin from Southampton Undisclosed and Bastian Schweinsteiger from Bayern Munich for £14m ) Matteo Darmian (from Torino for £12m) and Depay as earlier stated. The close to £100m outlay by the club shows they are serious about finishing higher than their 4th place finish last season(17 points behind the Champions).

Unveiling the "Sch duo" and Darmain

 Liverpool have also been busy with the signing of Firmino (from Hoffenheim for £29m), Nathaniel Clyne (from Southampton for £12.5m), Joe Gomez (from Charlton Athletic for £3.5m) and the free transfers of Milner,Ings and Bogdan

Manchester City's foray into the transfer market has been mainly to makeup for there almost non-existent Home grown quota, they have signed Fabian Delph (from Aston Villa for £8.0m), Patrick Roberts (from Fulham for £12.0m) and the major one Raheem Sterling(for a whooping £49.0m from Liverpool)

Arsenal's only purchase so far is the Goalkeeper Petr Cech (from Chelsea for £10.0m) and Chelsea's deals have all been reactionary (replacement) purchases Asmir Begovic (from Stoke City for £8m) to replace Petr Cech and Radamel Falcao (on loan from Monaco) to replace Drogba.

Major deals in Italy include Paulo Dybala (to Juventus from Palermo for a fee of £32m), Carlos Bacca (to Milan from Sevilla for a fee of £30m), Geoffrey Kondogbia (Inter from Monaco for a fee of £30m), Andrea Bertolacci (to Milan from Roma for a fee of £20m), Mario Mandzukic (to Juventus from Atletico Madrid for a fee of £19m), Brazilian forward Luiz Adriano (to Milan from Shakhtar Donetsk for a fee of £8m)

The high profile signings in Spain include Jackson Martinez ( To Atletico Madrid from Porto for a fee of £36.7m), Danilo ( To Real Madrid from Porto for a fee of £31.5m), Alvaro Negredo ( permanenting his stay at Valencia from Manchester City for a fee of £30m), Yannick Ferreira Carrasco ( To Atletico Madrid from Monaco for a fee of £20m). Despite the Transfer ban on Barcelona, they have signed Turkish midfielder Arda Turan from Atletico Madrid for a fee of £34m and Defender Aleix Vidal from Sevilla for a fee of £17m.

No much major transfers in Germany, the stand out one is Douglas Costa's move to Bayern Munich from Shakhtar Donetsk for a fee of £30m, Johannes Geis joined Schalke 04 from Mainz for a fee of £12, and Max Kruse joined Wolfsburg from Borussia Monchengladbach for a fee of £12m.

Surprisingly, Turkey has seen an influx of high profile names albeit in the twilight of their careers, names such as Robin Ver Persie (the 31 year old joined Fenerbahce from Manchester United), Nani (the 28 year old joined Fenerbahce from Manchester United) and Podolski (The 30 year old joined Galatasaray from Arsenal).

RVP in Fenerbahce's colours

SPECULATIONS
Deals that could be completed this week are:

• Di Maria to PSG - Possibility of happening 70%
• Arturo Vidal to Bayern Munich - Possibility of happening 85%
• Benzema to Arsenal or Manchester United - Possibility of happening 45%
• John Stones to Chelsea - Possibility of happening 80%
• Benteke to Liverpool or Manchester United - Possibility of happening 90%
• Ramos to Manchester United - Possibility of happening 70%
• Pogba to Barcelona - Possibility of happening 55%
• Jonny Evans to Everton - Possibility of happening 65%
• Arda Turan out on Loan - Possibility of happening 40%
• Otamendi to Manchester United - Possibility of happening 65%
• Filipe Luiz to Ath. Madrid - Possibility of happening 90%
• Baba Rahman to Chelsea - Possibility of happening 80%
• Pedro to Chelsea, Man. United - Possibility of happening 75%

This is all from me for this week, next week we'll see how many of my predictions came to be:-)

The Treasonable Parrot

By Dr Ogaga Ifowodo

Starting today we will begin the serialisation of short fiction by Ogaga Ifowodo, the award-winning poet, columnist and activist. The stories to be featured are from his work-in-progress entitled The Hostage, beginning with the story “The Treasonable Parrot,” his fiction debut featured in the AGNI Portfolio of African Fiction, edited by E. C. Osondu and William Pierce, published in volume 72 of the magazine in 2010. At the heart of the collection is the title story, a novella. As the general caption of this special serialisation suggests, the stories are set in Nigeria’s recent history of dictatorship as experienced by characters privately and in unsavoury social encounters caused by the relentless logic of the radical curtailment of freedom. Book your copy in advance!

Everything depended on what the parrot remembered, but Colonel Jonas Akalo was a clever military intelligence officer who privately boasted his mastery of psychological and unconventional warfare. Privately, as this was only revealed at the end of his ingenious effort to unravel the secret of a failed coup.

When he arrived with his men too late at the house of Chief Gregory Okotie, the civilian ringleader of yet another coup attempt in Nigeria, he sought at once, on seeing a parrot in a golden cage to put this mastery to use. For Colonel Akalo, nothing was ever too late and every case remained permanently open. So he did not think for a second of accepting defeat or even returning to plot a new line of inquiry in his den at the Directorate of Military Intelligence.

The parrot transfixed him with its beautifully tinged orange, blue, and yellow plumes that contrasted so nicely with pearly eyelids around intense yellow-grey eyes and a ferociously curved ivory beak. With an almost imperceptible angling of its head, the parrot looked disdainfully at the intruders, then returned its gaze to the window as if willing its fugitive master to come this moment and rid the house of these unwanted guests.

The cage was on top of an antique gramophone cabinet in the brightest part of the parlor, and sitting there the parrot appeared every bit its own master now and a step away from showing Colonel Akalo the door.

Then one of Colonel Akalo’s men coughed, a waiting-for-your-order-sir cough, and snapped him out of his parrot-induced trance. Colonel Akalo looked around. Nothing in the parlor betrayed conspiracy or flight and it seemed that any second Chief Okotie might walk in the door to pick up his forgotten briefcase.

Or that someone would emerge from a room. But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Colonel Akalo took two quick steps forward and, pointing, declared with surprising vehemence, “That parrot knows the secret of the coup!” He ordered his bewildered aide-de-camp to bring the cage to him.

The parrot remained icily indifferent to the green-clad men now violating its peace and privacy by this forcible relocation. Colonel Akalo took personal custody of the cage and right there began to build the case against the bird. The parrot had to have heard something, and must remember what it heard, about the planning of the coup and the well-orchestrated escape of most of the ringleaders. Surely some midnight gatherings had taken place here. And of course none of the plotters would have cared for an instant about being overheard by a bird.

This was the perfect occasion to make use of the training in psychological and unconventional warfare that Colonel Akalo claimed to have received at a military academy in England. At Sandhurst, precisely, as the Inspector-General of Police, a childhood friend, would later reveal.

The Inspector-General had joined the police the same day Colonel Akalo headed for the army recruitment center, and he was the only source of intelligence on what the press very quickly dubbed “the mad colonel’s case.” But he was quick to add that he’d thought nothing of his friend’s claim when he’d heard it five years ago. “I believed it to be a drink-induced boast at the end of a long evening at the police officer’s mess,” he said.

Now holding a caged parrot that had doubtless overheard a coup plot, Colonel Akalo was almost delirious recalling how, a week after the commencement of experiments, the academy’s laboratory parrot had repeated whole bits of classroom conversations. He smiled, and his young aide, a lieutenant, was even more puzzled.

But when Colonel Akalo then declared the parrot a traitor and ordered that the bird be arrested, the aide uncharacteristically lost military composure for a moment. His salute seemed merely demonstrative, and his compliant “Yes, sir!” too loud to hide his incredulity. Colonel Akalo overlooked the impertinence and declared the operation over. Yes, he would crack the mystery of this coup, the only one to have fooled him completely.

How had mutiny gone from incubation to execution without his getting wind of it? He considered it a personal affront that he, before whom even generals with the remotest connection to coup plots quailed “like women in labor,” as he never tired of saying, had failed to nip this one in the bud.

As the convoy of a pilot car, a jeep, his staff car, and two trucks full of “combat-ready” soldiers raced back to his DMI fortress, Colonel Akalo worked up a strategy for making the parrot tell him all that it knew about the coup. For maximum privacy, he would interrogate it in his bunker office, three floors below street level, from which no sound, however bloodcurdling, could be heard. With growing satisfaction he looked at the prisoner sitting in its golden cage beside him, as the sentry soldiers, on sighting his approach, threw open the gates and stiffened into green statues. He was sure of pressing every detail of the coup out of the parrot’s throat.

Just before going underground, Colonel Akalo called General Musa Barawo, the self-styled President and Commander-in-Chief, made a preliminary report, and asked for twelve uninterrupted hours before the first briefing. He knew what he had to do with his prisoner.

He would painstakingly provoke the bird into confessing. He would compel it to disclose the whereabouts of Gregory Okotie and all the traitors who had escaped. “But parrots are tricky animals,” he said to himself, once again recalling the precious lessons of his special training. “And I’m going to have to be very patient.” He would follow every lead, however faint, in order to identify the gap in his net of surveillance. After the last coup attempt, he had promised General Barawo that there would be no other—certainly not in the next three years. That was how long he estimated the patience of the populace would last.

Their anger, already at boiling point, was being stirred, quite propitiously, by increasingly troublesome democracy and rights activists. Colonel Akalo’s aim was to make himself indispensable when General Barawo’s undeclared but widely suspected plan of dropping his uniform to become a civilian president was finally out in the open, and the country, in a tumult, was once again ripe for the taking.

General Barawo would be under immense pressure then. He looked forward to that moment when he would be king or kingmaker, the choice his alone. And it was obvious that the path to his ambition lay in making it unmistakably clear to all adventurous officers that no plot within the army, or in alliance with civilian millionaires for that matter, would succeed while he remained in uniform.

To prepare for the session with his prisoner, Colonel Akalo picked up his heavily marked copy of Crime and Punishment, its cover now woolly to the touch. “That novel was another source of his purported training,” the Inspector-General told an astonished public, adding one more tidbit to its growing fascination with the mad colonel. As he fondled the book and rose to go down to the interrogation bunker, Colonel Akalo remembered sitting spellbound, listening to the course instructor remark on “the immense psychological resources for intelligence work which that great murder story possesses.”

By the end of the four-week class, he had read and re-read the novel three times, always delaying at the dialogues between the clever prosecutor, Porfiry Petrovich, and the murderer-with-a-cause, Rodion Raskolnikov. The clincher for him was the instructor’s view that if there can be murder to justify a theory, so also may interrogations be conducted to affirm guilt. He had been back in the memory of that realisation when he made the declaration that stunned his aide-de-camp. Well, he would show him. And he would show General Barawo, who chuckled before saying, “All right. Go ahead, Colonel. I trust you to surpass yourself once again.” Oh, he would show the whole world.

Colonel Akalo had twelve hours to be done with his prisoner before assuming his position as chairman of the special military tribunal to try the traitors arrested before they could flee. Chief Okotie or no Chief Okotie, he would deal with them swiftly and rigorously. This position as head of special tribunals had become his special prerogative. His work in the last two had pleased General Barawo so much that, but for his promise that there would be no further coups, he was sure to head every future tribunal until he retired from the army or indeed became king and not just kingmaker.

He had built a fearsome reputation from his work with the first. Every day he relived with indescribable glee that glorious hour when two lieutenant-generals in fetters, one of them the army chief of staff, his own boss, flopped at his feet and wept, begging for their lives. From the day that news of the generals’ unspeakable conduct made the headlines of every newspaper in the country, complete with photos, he was perceived as the very hammer and barrel of the gun that sustained the regime of General Barawo.

But that was now the only thing to console Colonel Akalo. He looked at his watch and was alarmed to learn that ten hours had passed since his vaunted training began to prove useless to the reality before him. In just two hours he would make his report to General Barawo, and he had yet to extract a single word from the parrot. The bird had remained so still throughout, never changing its perch once, that he had several times doubted if it was still alive. He’d done everything he could think of, from gently questioning to plucking five of its tail feathers, but the parrot had kept its beak firmly closed. At first he found its eerie stillness curious and understandable.

After all, this austere underground bunker was a far cry from Chief Okotie’s sumptuous parlour. But it wasn’t long before this feeling gave way to irritation and, finally, boiling anger. The bird, rather than answer questions, continued to stare unblinkingly at the peak of his service cap. What was it on the cap that so fascinated the plotting parrot? When he removed the cap, the parrot kept its piercing gaze on his glistening forehead. Colonel Akalo sensed himself unhinging.

“Just what are you staring at?” he asked.

He heard only the echo of his voice, followed by a silence that further frayed his nerves.

“We shall see,” he said. Then looking the bird closely in the eye, he added, “I suppose you will not talk. Perhaps your coup-plotting master swore you to silence, but you will soon know you are better off talking to me. If you tell me everything you heard while those traitors planned their coup, I will set you free. Now, talk.”

The parrot was unmoved by the bribe. A bead of sweat rolled off Colonel Akalo’s cheek. At the thin edge of fury, Colonel Akalo struck a match and threw it into the cage. The parrot fluttered without even changing its perch. The match went out and for a moment Colonel Akalo relished the whiff of burning feathers.

He laughed. Short, high pitched snorts that carried with them the depth of his burgeoning malevolence. The parrot resumed its implacable stare at Colonel Akalo’s forehead and, suddenly, an awful thought stole into Colonel Akalo’s mind. He realized now that he had one choice. He would either break the bird or the bird would be his death. He shivered and stood up, paced around his grey metal desk, which together with the chairs on both sides was the only furniture in the room, and returning to his seat, saw why his choice had become so bleak.

“I cannot accept defeat at the hands of a mere bird,” he said aloud, pounding the desk with his right hand.

He pictured the inevitable sneer on General Barawo’s face, and worse, his aide’s barely concealed smirk of victory, when he emerged from his bunker with the wretched odor of defeat preceding him. But Colonel Akalo showed he hadn’t lost it all when he remembered the theory he was out to prove, its giddy promise, and resolved to break the parrot. A bright idea occurred to him then, but how could he not have thought of it all this time? He had seen his error. He had adopted the psychological investigator’s model without his technique. He needed to change tack, but what had he not tried that could pry the furtive parrot’s beak open?

Yes, he had got it! He would simulate a conversation among the traitors, casually dropping in their names. In that way the bird’s memory would be jolted, and unable to resist its nature it would start to talk. Yes, he had got it right at last! Colonel Akalo pulled out a liter bottle of Red Label, wrung off the cap, swigged two mouthfuls, and began. He was midway through the second rehash of his invented conversation when the parrot finally squawked. Colonel Akalo was elated. He hadn’t quite caught the words, but he was sure the bird had spoken. He leaned towards the cage and stared at the parrot, but it was so still he feared he must have imagined hearing it speak.

Colonel Akalo was downcast. He tipped the bottle again and cast a bleary look at the parrot, furious that it could be so sly and aloof while he was close to despair. He drew his service pistol and pointed it at his prisoner, but somehow remained calm enough to repeat his simulated conversation to the point where he thought he’d heard the bird speak. Again the parrot squawked, and this time he was sure. But what was that? He was unable to make any sense of it, though there was no doubt now that his prisoner had, indeed, broken its silence (To avoid repeating this word, just three sentences after, in the same context). He went through the conversation for the fourth time, pushing his nose right to the metal of the cage.

“Well, Chief Okotie, we know how much you are risking in this operation. We also understand that, being a civilian, this is an unusual venture for you. But vice president and minister of finance for four years, that is more than enough reward, you will agree? Moreover, we promise to arrange an election to make you president in due course. Surely you can’t expect more?”

The parrot squawked again, clearly now: “Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!”

Colonel Akalo was puzzled. After pondering the parrot’s strange words for a few minutes, he decided to go over his simulated conversation for the fifth and final time to see if he might get a clue from whatever the parrot volunteered next. Colonel Akalo spoke as if making the early morning broadcast. “Fellow Nigerians, I, Major Gordon Shija . . .”

“Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!” the parrot repeated.

“Is that a code? What does it mean?” Colonel Akalo yelled at the parrot. But the bird was silent once again, burning his forehead with its cold stare. Colonel Akalo was finally unable to restrain himself. He aimed his pistol at the parrot and warned it for the last time. “Now listen to me, you bloody parrot. Still in your golden cage, you probably don’t know where you are. This is a bunker, far from your master’s parlour in Ikeja. If you don’t answer my question now, I will either shoot you dead here or have you shot elsewhere. One more chance to live. Tell me, what does ‘Musa is a fool’ mean?”

“Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool,” the parrot screeched, this time with a definite smirk in its tone.

Colonel Akalo squeezed the trigger. It was a muffled pistol, so he heard himself yell, “Bloody bastard, no man or beast dares me and leaves this room alive!” The bullet hit the reinforced concrete wall, bounced off the desk and fell at his feet. Colonel Akalo was bathed anew in his sweat. He dropped into his chair, sensing himself swaying slightly, lightheaded from the mental exertion. The whisky too had begun to take hold. Then quite unbidden the parrot screeched again, “Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!”

“All right, Musa is a fool, is that so? Soon you will know who is a fool.” He picked up the spent bullet and put it in his right flap pocket. Then he lifted the handle of the green rotary telephone to summon his aide-de-camp. A door opened and he was shocked to see not his aide but General Barawo. And now he felt like a man whose time was up, a prize-hunter lured out of safety and thrust in sight of his wounded quarry. Why had the Commander-in-Chief come in unannounced? Had he really just come in, or had he seen him shoot at a caged parrot? Colonel Akalo tried his best to regain composure enough to loosen his tongue. He heard himself say, “Your Excellency, sir, what a surprise. I was just about to—”

“Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!” the parrot said in a stunningly human voice, an unmistakable taunt in its creaky laughter.

“What was that, Colonel Akalo?” General Barawo asked. “I’m not sure I understand you.”

Colonel Akalo again willed life into his tongue. “Pardon me, Your Excellency, sir, but I didn’t say anything. Sir, may I ask what you heard?”

“Curious, very curious, Colonel Akalo. When you announced your marvelous plan for unraveling the secret of a coup by interrogating a parrot, I doubted your sanity. But you have proved me wrong before and I thought you might surprise me again, so I granted your wish. Besides, I understand you claim special training from Sandhurst. That course must have been added after my time there, I dare say! But no matter. You asked for twelve uninterrupted hours before briefing me and I granted that too. It is now three full hours since your time was up, and since you did not have any news for me, I thought I’d come see you at work. And what do you salute me with? ‘Musa is a fool!’ Is that right, Colonel Akalo, am I a fool? Well, speak up, Colonel, for I don’t have any more time to waste.”

Colonel Akalo’s tongue would not move, so he opened his lips and made a soft choking sound.

“Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!” the bird screeched with irrepressible glee, this time startling Colonel Akalo who thought he was hearing himself speak.

“There you go again, Colonel Akalo. I see that—”

“Your Excellency, sir, I . . . Sir, it—”

“Oho, so you do have a tongue after all! I was beginning to think a parrot had taken it from you. Well, then, use it! What do I hear you say?”

Colonel Akalo realized how far he was from being kingmaker, never mind king. All he could do for the moment was explain. The Commander-in-Chief had heard the only thing the parrot had said since he began the interrogation. His error, he declared, was to have underestimated a civilian coup plotter. “I believe now,” he said, “that Chief Okotie planted the well-trained parrot with the present result in mind. Sir, I have concluded that we will get nothing from this parrot.”

“Speak for yourself alone, Colonel,” said General Barawo acidly. “Wenever thought coup secrets could be got from a parrot. Your aide tells me he was so astonished by your decision to arrest a bird that he very nearly disobeyed an order for the first time. Well, I should like to know what you propose to do.”

Colonel Akalo described his plan. He would turn his attention to the tribunal, to bringing the arrested traitors to justice. He could even joke: “Now that I am going to be dealing with human suspects, I hope Your Excellency, sir, will be assured of my usual unimpeachable services?”

“And the parrot?” pressed General Barawo.

“Leave the bloody bird to me, sir. I will take care of it.”

General Barawo left the room. He would have to delay the tribunal’s sitting by a day—which wasn’t a bad thing, come to think of it, as that would give him more time to decide what to do with Colonel Akalo. He was even surer now that the colonel would do exactly what he wanted with the trials, which was to send a stern message to traitors in and outside the army. Especially outside the army. The idea of wealthy civilians funding mutiny in the military had to be stamped out. He would let Colonel Akalo conclude the trials, after which he must dispense with him. He could already detect worrisome ambition lurking behind all that zealousness.

Colonel Akalo was glad to get away lightly, considering that General Barawo was not known to give second chances. And he had decided on the fate of the parrot. By refusing to talk, the treacherous bird had displayed unalloyed loyalty to its master and so proved itself a public enemy. It had also thoroughly humiliated him in the process.

The Colonel proved himself a redoubtable military jurist once more. Of the 127 persons tried, only five escaped death by firing squad. They were to serve life sentences.

Because of the large number of condemned persons, the executions took place in three batches at the Bar Beach on Victoria Island. The beach, once a half-mile or so of warm sands washed and replenished by the Atlantic’s waves, had lost most of its natural charm and many of its genteel visitors. It was now a haven of derelicts, lunatics, and members of the Aladura sect in cheap white gowns offering frenzied prayers to their sea-dwelling God, of hookers looking for hard-pressed men, pickpockets, a smattering of intrepid tourists, itinerant food vendors, suya merchants, hawkers of sundry wares, buskers and beggars, peddlers of Indian hemp or marijuana and even more potent drugs (if you know what gbana is), and shopkeepers who sold beer and soft drinks from makeshift kiosks of plywood or palm fronds.

The beach stretched from the perimeter fence of the Nigerian Television Authority on the right, driving down Ahmadu Bello Way from Bonny Camp up to Eko Hotel, formerly the Eko Holiday Inn. It afforded a splendid view of the waterfront skyline when you faced the shore and an unbroken ocean view that dissolved at the distant meeting point of heaven and earth. But the beach suffered its worst fate when it was chosen for the public execution of armed robbers in the hope of stemming the violent crimes that plagued the country in the aftermath of the civil war.

On the day the last round of executions was to take place, the atmosphere was anything but gloomy. In fact, it was a sunny afternoon tempered by that soothing sea breeze that Lagosians would do anything for on those balmy afternoons when the infernal heat drove them mad. It was a perfect day for walking barefoot in sand and foam, carousing close to a suya stand away from the crashing waves, swimming if you were bold and swift enough, or wandering away to read a book or write a poem or nurture a beard under a coconut tree.

It seemed both a crime and a sin to have public executions on this day, but soon a bugle sounded and the condemned men, consisting of a colonel, three majors, and two captains said to be among the nine military masterminds of the coup, were led in, their hands cuffed behind them. They were promptly tied to stakes affixed to oil drums filled with wet sand. But there was a seventh sand-filled drum to which nobody was bound. A murmur had just begun about why it was there at all when a beautiful parrot in a copper cage was brought out by two armed soldiers. The crowd surged forward, but horsewhips cracked left and right and quickly restored order. This was indeed a novelty. Those who had witnessed every execution at the beach swore they had seen nothing like it before.

The cage was placed on the drum. It was high noon when the firing squad marched in to the music of a small army brass band, followed by Colonel Akalo, who took a seat set up for him under a big green-and-white umbrella. He had assigned Sergeant Musa, the deadliest sniper in the army, to the parrot. Now it will know who is a fool. The countdown began and the crowd held its breath. A few women, children, and even some men unmanned by the prospect of the warm red blood about to be spilled, averted their eyes. “Ten, nine, eight . . . one, fire!”A mad staccato of gunshots rent the air. Colonel Akalo pulled a green handkerchief from a pocket of his speckled combat jacket. He wiped his face, which ran with sweat despite the cool breeze. Then he signaled for his whisky, ready to drink to the death of the treasonable parrot. An aide put the bottle in his hand, cap unscrewed. As he lifted the quarter-full Red Label to his lips, he noticed that an unusual hubbub had taken the place of the usual ghostly silence after an execution. In a moment he knew why. The crowd had turned almost as one person to stare at him. Slowly his hand fell to his side.

“Laila-illalahi!” he cried, losing grip of the bottle and spilling its contents onto the beach sand as if in propitiation of some new wicked spirit now in charge. Sergeant Musa’s first bullets had missed their target but somehow cut a neat hole in the cage. And now the crowd, transformed into one pair of eyes, was following the parrot as it flew straight towards Colonel Akalo. He felt the same infuriating disdain of those intense yellow-grey eyes back in the interrogation bunker. Then time slowed to a dead stop, the last grain in the hourglass, and he knew that unless he could flee the parrot and the crowd he would die. He tried to stand up and run, but the sea of men, women, and children pressing in on him didn’t permit an inch of movement. And in that timelessness, he saw Sergeant Musa tracking the parrot’s flight with his rifle. With one eye squinted shut and the other in the rifle’s sight, the deadliest sniper in the army saw only the bird. As Sergeant Musa perfected his aim, Colonel Akalo looked into the barrel of his trusted executioner’s rifle and wailed, “Don’t shoot, you bloody fool! Forget about the bird!” But his tongue was heavy, heavier than the sand-filled drums where six men had crumbled, their lives draining into the sea. Nor would it have mattered had he been able to yell in his best parade voice. In that instant, longer than a day and shorter than a heartbeat, the parrot alighted on his forehead and Sergeant Musa pulled the trigger.

A gasp from the crowd joined the thundering of the Atlantic as Colonel Akalo took three bullets in the head and fell. For a moment, Sergeant Musa and the crowd stood frozen into one solid mass of bodies. But soon enough, the afternoon sun thawed them back into individual men and women and children, and they turned to watch the flight of the parrot. It had changed direction the moment the bullets found Colonel Akalo and headed for the open sea, squawking repeatedly the only words it remembered hearing the coup plotters say: “Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool! Haa-haa-haa-haa! Musa is a fool!”

South African Pastor Ask Members To Eat Snake !!! Live Snake!!

The pastor of the End Time Disciples in South Africa is up to it again, only that this time he has raised his bar a little higher, from asking members to eat grass like a freaking herbivore to eating live snakes like a freaky carnivore or an eagle, claiming that he through the power of "God" converted it to chocolate, c'mon man chocolate is much cheaper than snakes, why don't you just give this guys real chocolate . This guy is something else

This lady has a mouthful of snake,

That woman beside this guy is like ehwwwww man, disgusting, the guy does not seem to mind

 This woman seems to be struggling, that must be some really tough meat

This pastor is also the same one who asked his members to eat their undies

you know that feeling when you eat something and just can't express how tasty that thing is, well thats is the expression

This Pastor and his church have come under a lot of criticism for his "unique style", but he seem not to mind,  the question I ask him is, what is the essence of all this? is it to glorify God or to glorify himself,  and when talking about God, which God are we talking about?

Senators Saraki and Ekweremadu's Elections Are a Nullity

It is our considered view that the election of Bukola Saraki as the Senate President and Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President is illegal,unconstitutional, null and void. It is a sham. Put in another way, Bukola Saraki and Ekweremadu, are not, legally speaking, the Senate President and Deputy Senate President of Nigeria. They are impostors, who should stop parading themselves as senate president and deputy senate president. Asking Ekweremadu to yield up the office of the Deputy Senate President, as some partisans who have labeled him a PDP usurper have suggested, does not arise. De jure, he is not occupying the office of the Deputy Senate President from which he may resign. You cannot resign from an office you do not occupy. Why do we say so?

Since the National Assembly (NASS) erupted in crisis during its Eighth “inauguration” and the “election” of the leadership of the Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, a lot has been said and written about the issues in dispute in the crisis. Unfortunately, rather than subject the “election” in the NASS, in particular in the Senate, on that day, to a rigorous legal examination, in order to determine the legality of that election, many of the principal actors in the NASS leadership crisis or in the All Progressives Congress (APC) imbroglio, and a host of other interveners have been discussing the politics of the crisis and its “mishandling” by the APC leadership who, according to these interveners, were hell bent on foisting a leadership on the NASS. Many simple-minded gloaters have even reduced the serious issues thrown up by the crisis to a celebration of the “political defeat of Bola Ahmed Tinubu”, as if that alleged defeat was all that was needed to make the aberration that occurred in the Assembly acceptable. In this intervention, we seek to redirect the discourse. We argue that the NASS leadership crisis primarily should be discussed and resolved on the basis of enquiries about whether there has been a violation of the rule of law and the provisions of the of the Nigerian Constitution.

What transpired in the NASS on Tuesday, June 9, 2015 was a coup d’état. If it was merely a coup d’état by the treacherous members of the APC against their party’s choices for the offices that constitute the leadership of the NASS, we would not have been bothered. We are bothered because it was also a coup d’état against the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the rule of law.

It would not have made any sense for the APC to have allowed its aspirant members to go on the floors of the Senate and the House to slugger it out amongst themselves. That is not the way a responsible party behaves. Strangely, some dubious partisans and jaundiced interveners have condemned the APC for striving to forge consensuses amongst its party members, insisting that the NASS should have been left alone to self-constitute its leadership, without the input of the parties of the respective members. This position that is being laundered as the correct approach that ought to have been adopted by the APC in order to guarantee the independence of the legislature is ignorant, plain dumb and silly.

On that day, while Senator Bukola Saraki of the APC, who has confessed that, like a typical coup d’état leader, he sneaked into the premises of the NASS at dawn, was “elected unopposed” as the Senate President, by 57 Senators, in the absence of 51 Senators, who were “ambushed” into a fence-mending and ranks-closing meeting that eventually turned out to be a hoax, Senator Ike Ekweremadu of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “defeated” his opponent, Senator Ali Ndume of the APC by 50 votes to 24 votes (with one abstention) to clinch the post of the Deputy Senate President. Instructively, the APC controls the Senate with 59 (now 58) Senators, while the PDP has 49 Senators, meaning that 108 members ought to have congregated on the Senate Floor on the said date to constitute the leadership of the Senate. Alas, only 57 senators and 75 senators took part in the elections into the two offices.

In the run up to the “inauguration” of the Eighth NASS on June 9, 2015, after the initial intra-party horse-trading and compromises, two blocks within the APC, keenly interested in fielding candidates and contesting available positions in the NASS leadership, had emerged: The offices were those of the Senate President, Deputy Senate President, Speaker of House of Representatives and Deputy Speaker of House of Representatives. For the House of Representatives, there was the Femi Gbajabiamila and Yakubu Dogara blocks, and for the Senate, there were the Bukola Saraki and Ahmed Lawan blocks. To put its house in order, the APC, correctly and responsibly, in our view, conducted a straw poll amongst her elected legislators to determine the popularity and acceptability of the aspirants and adopt consensus candidates of the party for the positions. It would not have made any sense for the APC to have allowed its aspirant members to go on the floors of the Senate and the House to slugger it out amongst themselves. That is not the way a responsible party behaves. Strangely, some dubious partisans and jaundiced interveners have condemned the APC for striving to forge consensuses amongst its party members, insisting that the NASS should have been left alone to self-constitute its leadership, without the input of the parties of the respective members. This position that is being laundered as the correct approach that ought to have been adopted by the APC in order to guarantee the independence of the legislature is ignorant, plain dumb and silly.

At the end of the straw poll, which the Saraki and Dogara blocks boycotted and walked out of, obviously because they were in the minority and because they did not want the decision of the majority to bind them, the Lawan and Gbajabiamila blocks emerged victorious. Consequently, the APC directed all its legislators that were to participate in the NASS Leadership Elections to toe the party line and vote for the party’s candidates in the elections.

Saraki, Dogara, and Lasun, all defectors from the PDP, simply reached out to their kith and kin in the PDP. And it only took the infusion of Ekweremadu for the family reunion to be complete. Blood, as we know, is always thicker than water. It was an act of gross betrayal and misconduct.

Upon realising that they did not command the following of a majority of their party members, the Saraki and Dogara blocks surreptitiously hatched a conspiracy against their party’s interest and forged a coalition with the PDP against their party choices. That coalition led to the “defeat” of the APC choices in the elections, and the triumphs of the Saraki and Dogara blocks. In the House of Representatives leadership election, Dogara scored 182 votes to Gbajabiamila’s 174 votes. Given the result of the election, it was obvious that out of the 209 APC legislators in the House, about 36 of them leagued up with PDP legislators to defeat Gbajabiamila, their “party’s” candidate for the office of the speaker, and Monguno, their party’s candidate for the office of the Deputy Speaker. Saraki, Dogara, and Lasun, all defectors from the PDP, simply reached out to their kith and kin in the PDP. And it only took the infusion of Ekweremadu for the family reunion to be complete. Blood, as we know, is always thicker than water. It was an act of gross betrayal and misconduct.

Without any doubt, the leadership tussle in the NASS has shown clearly the fault lines in Section 50 (1) of the Constitution.

Was that act of betrayal illegal or unconstitutional? No, even if it is immoral. Section 50 (1) of the Constitution says so. It provides that “there shall be:- (a) a President and a Deputy President of the Senate, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves; and (b) a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves“. By virtue of this provision, any member of the Senate or House of Representatives, be s/he of the majority party or minority party can be elected into any of the aforementioned positions, in so far as he or she is a member of the Senate or House of Representatives. It only stands to reason that if any legislator, regardless of the numerical strength of his party, can aspire to a leadership position in the upper and lower chambers, he or she can draw his electors from his own party or from other parties in the legislature. And any member can elect any other member of his choice to occupy any of the said positions, regardless of political party affinity or divide.

Without any doubt, the leadership tussle in the NASS has shown clearly the fault lines in Section 50 (1) of the Constitution. Section 50(1) needs an urgent amendment, such that the indubitable legislative intendment of having a majority party constitute the leadership of the parliament, while the minorities parties play the role of the parliamentary opposition can become more manifest and taken out of its current state of wooliness.

We are…not concerned about the moral wrong that the APC has suffered in the hands of her saboteur members, who, apparently fled a leprous PDP into the APC in the belief that staying back in the PDP in the 2015 general elections was going to harm their ambitions to get elected or re-elected into political offices. It was a mutation from one party to the other for political survival. It was “change”, indeed.

We have argued that the act of betrayal of the APC insurgents is not illegal or unconstitutional but immoral. But do we not all know that immorality, lack of integrity, opportunism and perennial power and money hunting are the hallmarks of a majority of Nigerian politicians? Lacking in scruples, values, principles and ideology, they change political parties, switch political allegiances and positions on any matter, based on their whims, caprices, political calculations and expectations, and pecuniary interests. Most of them are nothing but charlatans and political mercenaries. Lacking shame, noble comportment and decorum, but fixated on grabbing power for primitive accumulation and self aggrandisement, they do not mind dumping a “national conscience party”, “a national salvation congress”, or people redemption movement” for “a kidnappers party of Nigeria”, or “congress of Nigerian armed robbers”, regardless of the repugnance of such names, if the platforms give them an assurance of a short cut to power, and a shorter and surer route to the public till.

The APC that is now talking about party loyalty and supremacy, and is bellyaching about the treachery of the renegades within its ranks reeks of the vice of political prostitution, which usually is masked as patriotic expediency, political pragmatism, and free exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of association. We are, therefore, not concerned about the moral wrong that the APC has suffered in the hands of her saboteur members, who, apparently fled a leprous PDP into the APC in the belief that staying back in the PDP in the 2015 general elections was going to harm their ambitions to get elected or re-elected into political offices. It was a mutation from one party to the other for political survival. It was “change”, indeed.

As we have stated above, we are bothered because the events of June 9, 2015 have serious implications for Nigeria’s democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law.

…by their own declarations and admissions, the organisers of the sham election on the floor of the Senate on June 9, principally the Clerk of the National Assembly and his cohorts, claimed that they organised that election pursuant to the Senate Standing Orders, 2015, as amended, which purportedly provides that elections into the two offices shall be by secret ballot, instead of the open ballot as provided by Orders 72 and 73 of theSenate Standing Orders, 2011. As it has now become glaring, there was, in fact, no such Senate Standing Orders, 2015.

It is our considered view that the election of Bukola Saraki as the Senate President and Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President is illegal,unconstitutional, null and void. It is a sham. Put in another way, Bukola Saraki and Ekweremadu, are not, legally speaking, the Senate President and Deputy Senate President of Nigeria. They are impostors, who should stop parading themselves as senate president and deputy senate president. Asking Ekweremadu to yield up the office of the Deputy Senate President, as some partisans who have labeled him a PDP usurper have suggested, does not arise. De jure, he is not occupying the office of the Deputy Senate President from which he may resign. You cannot resign from an office you do not occupy. Why do we say so?

As at the time of the dissolution of the Seventh National Assembly, on June 4, 2015, the operative Rules of the Senate were Senate Standing Orders, 2011. Between that dissolution and the inauguration of the Eighth Senate on June 9, the Senate was not in existence. It was a period of interregnum. The Senate leadership of the Seventh Senate went with the dissolution of that Senate. Therefore, that leadership, acting alone, or in concert with the generality of the members of the Seventh Senate could not have amended the Senate Rules to produce the Senate Standing Orders, 2015. By virtue of Order 110(5) of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011, two-thirds majority of the Senate shall decide proposed amendments and such amendments shall form part of the Rules of the Senate. This purported amendment is the act of forgery that is being alleged against David Mark, Ekweremadu and the Clerk of the National Assembly, which has now become the subject of police investigation.

First, by their own declarations and admissions, the organisers of the sham election on the floor of the Senate on June 9, principally the Clerk of the National Assembly and his cohorts, claimed that they organised that election pursuant to the Senate Standing Orders, 2015, as amended, which purportedly provides that elections into the two offices shall be by secret ballot, instead of the open ballot as provided by Orders 72 and 73 of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011.

While the crime of forgery that is alleged may lead to prosecution and conviction if investigation establishes a prima facie case, the effect of that forged or manipulated document on the election at the Senate is stark. Being the foundation of that election, the election is rendered illegal, null and void. No senate president or deputy senate president can be elected pursuant to a non-existent or forged Senate Standing Orders.

As it has now become glaring, there was, in fact, no such Senate Standing Orders, 2015. As at the time of the dissolution of the Seventh National Assembly, on June 4, 2015, the operative Rules of the Senate were Senate Standing Orders, 2011. Between that dissolution and the inauguration of the Eighth Senate on June 9, the Senate was not in existence. It was a period of interregnum. The Senate leadership of the Seventh Senate went with the dissolution of that Senate. Therefore, that leadership, acting alone, or in concert with the generality of the members of the Seventh Senate could not have amended the Senate Rules to produce the Senate Standing Orders, 2015. By virtue of Order 110(5) of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011, two-thirds majority of the Senate shall decide proposed amendments and such amendments shall form part of the Rules of the Senate. This purported amendment is the act of forgery that is being alleged against David Mark, Ekweremadu and the Clerk of the National Assembly, which has now become the subject of police investigation. While the crime of forgery that is alleged may lead to prosecution and conviction if investigation establishes a prima facie case, the effect of that forged or manipulated document on the election at the Senate is stark. Being the foundation of that election, the election is rendered illegal, null and void. No senate president or deputy senate president can be elected pursuant to a non-existent or forged Senate Standing Orders.

In underscoring the nullity of the Saraki and Ekweremadu’s presidency and deputy presidency, we find it very apt to use the analogy of a familiar legal principle.

“A court can only be competent, if among other things, all the conditions precedent for its having jurisdiction are fulfilled. In Madukolu and Ors. v. Nkemdilim (1962) 1 All N.L.R. (Pt.4) 587 at 594 Bairamian, F. J, (as he then was) stated the principles which, ever since, have been accepted in successive cases in the Supreme Court of Nigeria. ‘A court is competent, he said, ‘when – (1) it is properly constituted as regards numbers and qualifications of the members of the bench, and no member is disqualified for one reason or another; (2) the subject matter of the case is within its jurisdiction, and there is no feature in the case which prevents the court from exercising its jurisdiction; and (3) the case comes before the court initiated by due process of law, and upon fulfillment of any condition precedent to the exercise of jurisdiction. Any defect in competence is fatal, for the proceedings are a nullity however well conducted and decided; the defect being extrinsic to the adjudication.’ See Skenconsult(Mg.)Ltd, & Anor. v. Ukey (l98l) 1 SC 6 at 15.

…it does not matter that following the purported election of Saraki and Ekweremadu, they were subsequently sworn in and they later administered the oath to the other senators. All that is a grandiose nullity. And also it does not matter that following that farce of an election, Senators Saraki and Ekweremade have been receiving courtesy visitors, including the Nigerian Bar Association Leadership (a big shame!) and some funny civil society elections monitors. This sham of an election is incurably defective, and cannot be cured by this ineffectual showmanship.

For example, a judgment that is given without jurisdiction, or a judgment which is a nullity, which is liable to be set aside, cannot give birth to a good execution. It does not even matter that the Judgment sought to be set aside has been executed. In such a situation, both the judgment that is liable to be set aside and the execution that is predicated thereon will suffer the same fate. The oft-cited dictum of Lord Denning in the case of Macfoy v. U.A.C. Ltd (1961) 3 W.L.R. 1405 at p. 1409 P1] comes to mind here. He said: “any purported exercise of any function being without any legal or constitutional authority was null and void and of no effect. If an act is void, then it is in law a nullity. It is not only bad but incurably bad. There is no need for an order of the court to set it aside. It is automatically null and void without much ado, though it is sometimes convenient to have the court declare it to be so. And every proceeding, which is founded on it, is also bad and incurably bad. You cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stay there. It will collapse.”

Thus, it does not matter that following the purported election of Saraki and Ekweremadu, they were subsequently sworn in and they later administered the oath to the other senators. All that is a grandiose nullity. And also it does not matter that following that farce of an election, Senators Saraki and Ekweremade have been receiving courtesy visitors, including the Nigerian Bar Association Leadership (a big shame!) and some funny civil society elections monitors. This sham of an election is incurably defective, and cannot be cured by this ineffectual showmanship.

There can be no equivocation on the critical question of whether an act in constitutional or not. If politicians prevaricate, the law does not. It is either a constitutional process has taken place or it has not taken place.

Also, it does no matter that the APC and the APC Presidency have accepted the sham election in the Senate as a successful coup d’état. They said “a somewhat constitutional process has taken place” and that they are ready to live with it. No sirs. You are wrong. There can be no equivocation on the critical question of whether an act in constitutional or not. If politicians prevaricate, the law does not. It is either a constitutional process has taken place or it has not taken place. An unconstitutional act cannot become “somewhat constitutional” because of the disposition to condone and accommodate such an act, based on political expediency or naïveté.

It is thus our submission that consequently, any Nigerian, be he a senator or not, who is affected by that election and is aggrieved has a right under Section 6(6)(b) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, to invoke the Court’s power of judicial review and the Court is empowered ex debito justitiae to nullify the purported election. Mercifully, before his glorious transition, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, (Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN and Senior Advocate of the Masses, SAM), of blessed memory had helped in liberalising the anti-public interest litigation rigidity of the legal principle of locus standi (standing or capacity to sue).

Secondly, even if the election in the Senate had been conducted on the basis of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011, it still would have been flawed, for not following the due process and for lack of compliance with the provisions of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011.

By reading the proclamation to a half empty Senate Chambers, the Clerk willfully committed an act of illegality. But this is not the only procedural error knowingly committed by the Clerk on that date. Upon reading the proclamation to a Senate Chamber that was half empty, the Clerk persisted in his aberration by not proceeding to the roll call and confirming the writs of election as well as declaration of assets and liabilities of the Senators-Elect…

Order 2 (Rules 1-3) in Chapter II of the Senate Orders, 2011, provides for the first sitting of the Senate as follows: “on the first sitting of a new Senate, pursuant to the proclamation of the first sitting of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senators-Elect shall assemble at the time and place so appointed; (2) Senators-elect, having assembled, the Clerk to the National Assembly shall: (a) read the proclamation for the holding of the first session of the Senate; (b) call the Senate to order, and proceed to the roll call and confirmation of writs of election as well as declaration of assets and liabilities of the Senators-Elect in alphabetical order; and (c) after the roll call, but before their swearing in, preside over the election of the President and Deputy President of the Senate; (3) each Senator-Elect called shall present the writ of election and the receipt for declaration of assets and liabilities which shall be laid upon the table by the Clerk.”

We submit that having failed or refused to comply with the Senate Rules contained in Order 2 (Rules 1-3) in Chapter II of the Senate Orders, 201, the condition precedent to the election of the senate president and deputy senate president was not satisfied, and thus all the steps taken thereafter, including nominations, acceptance of nominations, declaration as being elected unopposed, voting, conducting the president-elect to the chair of the Senate President, administering of oaths, all are a nullity.

The above stated procedure for convocation and inauguration of the Senate was not complied with on June 9, 2015, when the election purportedly took place. All the senators-elect did not assemble before the Clerk and his cohorts committed their grand fraud. It is after the senators-elect (not 57 or 75 of them, but all of them, save those who may be unavoidably absent, for example in the case of death, illness, detention in police or prison custody, or deliberate, clear and willful abstention from or boycott of the inauguration) had fully assembled that the Clerk can legally proceed to read the proclamation. By reading the proclamation to a half empty Senate Chambers, the Clerk willfully committed an act of illegality.

Being part of a conspiracy to foist a fait accomplion the absent senators, the Clerk was in a hurry to consummate an infamy.

But this is not the only procedural error knowingly committed by the Clerk on that date. Upon reading the proclamation to a Senate Chamber that was half empty, the Clerk persisted in his aberration by not proceeding to the roll call and confirming the writs of election as well as declaration of assets and liabilities of the Senators-Elect (again, we posit, not 57 or 74 of them, but all of them, save those who may be unavoidably absent, for example in the case of death, illness, detention in police or prison custody, or deliberate, clear and willful abstention from or boycott of the inauguration) in alphabetical order. The Rules say each senator-elect called shall present the writ of election and the receipt for declaration of assets and liabilities which shall be laid upon the table by the Clerk. Being part of a conspiracy to foist a fait accompli on the absent senators, the Clerk was in a hurry to consummate an infamy.

We submit that having failed or refused to comply with the Senate Rules contained in Order 2 (Rules 1-3) in Chapter II of the Senate Orders, 201, the condition precedent to the election of the senate president and deputy senate president was not satisfied, and thus all the steps taken thereafter, including nominations, acceptance of nominations, declaration as being elected unopposed, voting, conducting the president-elect to the chair of the Senate President, administering of oaths, all are a nullity.

To the rabblerousing defenders of the illegality that took place in the Senate Chambers on that day, who are contending that a quorum was formed to constitute the leadership of the Senate with 57 Senators, and later 75 Senators being in attendance, we say that you are wrong.

These rabble-rousers bandy, in isolation, Order 10 (1) of the Senate Standing Orders (Quorum) to justify their contention that there was a quorum to elect the Senate leadership. But Order 10 (Rules 1, 2 and 3) of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011 provide thus: “(1) The quorum of the Senate shall be one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate; (2) if, at any time during the daily sessions of the Senate, a question is raised by any senator as to the presence of a quorum, the presiding officer shall within 15 minutes forthwith, direct the Clerk to call the roll and announce the result and these proceedings shall be without debate; (3) whenever after such roll call, it shall be ascertained that a quorum is not present, the President of the Senate may direct Sergeant at arms to request and, when necessary, to compel the attendance of the absent senators, which order shall be determined without debate; and pending its execution, and until a quorum shall be present, no debate nor motion except to adjourn or to suspend sitting shall be in order.”

When the provisions of Order 10 ( 1-3) of the Senate Standing Orders and the above-cited provisions of the Constitution are properly read and construed, it becomes clear that those provisions do not apply to the first sitting of the Senate, and in particular the election of presiding officers of the Senate. They do not. In constituting the leadership of the Senate, all senators-elect not only have the right to contest in the election, they also have the right to participate in the election. They have the right to vote and be voted for. Therefore, none of them can be excluded, based on the forced application of the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause.

Section 54 of the Constitution also provides more forcefully in subsections 1-4 as follows: “(1) the quorum of the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall be one-third of all the members of the Legislative House concerned.”; “(2) the quorum of a joint sitting of both the Senate or of the House of Representatives shall be one-third of all the members of both Houses.”; “(3) If objection is taken by any member of the Senate or the House of Representatives present that there are present in the House of which he is a member (besides the person presiding) fewer than one-third of all the members of that House and that it is not competent for the House to transact business, and after such interval as may be prescribed in the rules of procedure of the House, the person presiding ascertains that the number of members present is still less than one-third of all the members of the House he shall adjourn the House.”; and “(4) The foregoing provisions of this section shall apply in relation to a joint sitting of both Houses of the National Assembly as they apply in relation to a House of the National Assembly as if references to the Senate or the House of Representatives and a member of either Houses are references to both Houses and to any member of the National Assembly, respectively.”

Gathering to elect a leadership of the Senate may be a meeting or an assembly, but certainly not a sitting.

When the provisions of Order 10 ( 1-3) of the Senate Standing Orders and the above-cited provisions of the Constitution are properly read and construed, it becomes clear that those provisions do not apply to the first sitting of the Senate, and in particular the election of presiding officers of the Senate. They do not. In constituting the leadership of the Senate, all senators-elect not only have the right to contest in the election, they also have the right to participate in the election. They have the right to vote and be voted for. Therefore, none of them can be excluded, based on the forced application of the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause. The quorum clause applies to the ordinary sitting (or daily sessions) of the Senate, its committees or its joint sitting with the House of Representatives. It does not apply to the first sitting of the Senate, which, in the context of the Senate Standing Orders, is not a sitting, properly so called. At the inaugural first “sitting” of the Senate, all senators-elect are expected to assemble and participate in the election. Not one-third of them.

A sitting of the Senate, to which “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause applies can only start or take place after the first “sitting” of the Senate, that is after the election of the Senate’s presiding officers, and not before. The Senate cannot sit without presiding officers. A court cannot sit without a judge or panel of judges presiding. Gathering to elect a leadership of the Senate may be a meeting or an assembly, but certainly not a sitting.

Order 5 of the Senate Standing Orders provides that after their respective elections, “the President and Deputy President of the Senate shall take and subscribe to the oath/affirmation of allegiance and membership prescribed in the Constitution before the Clerk to the National Assembly“. Order 6 of the Senate Standing Orders provides that “having been sworn, the President of the Senate returns his acknowledgment to the Senate for the honours confirmed upon him, thereupon takes the Chair, and then the mace (which hitherto lay under the table shall be laid upon the table).” Order 8 of the Senate Standing Orders provides that “every senate elect shall, before taking his seat, take and subscribe to the oath/affirmation of allegiance and membership prescribed in the 7th Schedule to the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, before the President of the Senate.” And Order 11 (contained in Chapter III-Sittings of the Senate) of the Senate Standing Orders provides that “(1) the President of the Senate shall allocate a seat to each senator; and (2) a senator may only speak from a seat allocated to him, provided that the President of the Senate may change the allocation from time to time.”

Reading these orders and cited provisions of Sections 52 and 53 of the Constitution together, in relation to the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause, it should be very clear, even to the dull and unintelligent, that until the President and Deputy Senate President are sworn, take the Chair, the Mace of the Senate is laid on the table, every senator-elect is sworn and takes his seat, and the President of the Senate allocates a seat to each Senator, there can be no sitting orsession of the Senate to which the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause can apply. At any sitting of the Senate, the President or Deputy Senate President must preside. A gathering of senators, where the President and Deputy President are yet to be elected, let alone presiding, is, thus, not a sitting for the purpose of applicability of the quorum clause.

In the same vein, and foundationally, Section 52. (1) of the Constitution of Nigeria provides that “every member of the Senate or the House of Representatives shall, before taking his seat, declare his assets and liabilities as prescribed in this Constitution and subsequently take and subscribe the Oath of Allegiance and the oath of membership as prescribed in the Seventh Schedule to this Constitution before the President of the Senate or, as the case may be, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, but a member may before taking the oaths take part in the election of a President and a Deputy President of the Senate, as the case may be, or a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Section 52(2) of the Constitution provides that “the President and Deputy President of the Senate and the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representative shall declare their assets and liabilities as prescribed in this Constitution and subsequently take and subscribe the Oath of Allegiance and the oath of membership prescribed as aforesaid before the Clerk of the National Assembly.” And Section 53. (1)(a) of the Constitution provides that “at any sitting of the National Assembly – (a) in the case of the Senate, the President of the Senate shall preside, and in his absence the Deputy President shall preside;”

As every observer of the charade called an election in the Senate witnessed, the Senate Chambers was invaded by PDP cheerleaders, including PDP Governors, who stormed the Senate to “supervise the election”. This fact gives credence to our submission that no sitting or session of the Senate took place on that day to which “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause could apply.

Reading these orders and cited provisions of Sections 52 and 53 of the Constitution together, in relation to the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause, it should be very clear, even to the dull and unintelligent, that until the President and Deputy Senate President are sworn, take the Chair, the Mace of the Senate is laid on the table, every senator-elect is sworn and takes his seat, and the President of the Senate allocates a seat to each Senator, there can be no sitting or session of the Senate to which the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause can apply. At any sitting of the Senate, the President or Deputy Senate President must preside. A gathering of senators, where the President and Deputy President are yet to be elected, let alone presiding, is, thus, not a sitting for the purpose of applicability of the quorum clause. Without a sitting, no sensible person can be talking about a quorum. Clearly, senators-elect, including aspirant presiding officers (who are yet to be elected) cannot sit until all the afore-stated protocols are completed. Quorum applies to a sitting of the Senate, and not to an assembly of senators who are gathered for the sole purpose of constituting a leadership that will preside over the Senate, so that sitting may commence. The Senate cannot sit before the election of presiding officers. And it is when the Senate does sit that the “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause can apply.

Our third ground for reaching the conclusion that the election of Senator Bukola Saraki and Senator Ekweremadu as senate president and deputy senate president is a nullity is that the “election” was not in conformity with the spirit and letters of the Constitution. It did not pass the test of an inclusive and participatory democratic process under the Constitution. 57 senators or 75 senators cannot validly elect the leadership of the National Assembly, even if the Senate Rules were not doctored, save in the exceptional situations suggested above.

Order 17 (1) of the Senate Standing Orders, 2011 provides that “no person shall be admitted to the lobby or the floor of the Senate while in session, except the following and only by consent of the Senate.” The Order then provides a long list of current and former public office holders, who, with permission of the Senate, are eligible to be admitted into the Chambers. These include the president and vice president, former elected presidents and vice presidents, former president and former deputy presidents of the senate, former senators and senators-elect, judges of the Supreme Court, Governors of State and former elected Governors, et cetera.

As every observer of the charade called an election in the Senate witnessed, the Senate Chambers was invaded by PDP cheerleaders, including PDP Governors, who stormed the Senate to “supervise the election”. This fact gives credence to our submission that no sitting or session of the Senate took place on that day to which “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” quorum clause could apply. If the Senate was in session, its permission would have been sought and obtained before the admittance of those intruders. There was no “session” or “sitting” of the Senate on that day, and there was no leadership to give any consent to the invaders or strangers to come into the Chambers and participate in the sham process as observers. Even if we were to assume that the Clerk of the National Assembly allowed the invasion, the Clerk of the National Assembly is not the Senate. Thus, he, lawfully, could not have given any consent to the intruders to come in. If he did so, he acted unlawfully.

In electing the leadership of the Senate, the intendment of the framers of the Constitution is that all the senators, who are to be inaugurated and sworn in at that first “sitting” will assemble and be eligible to vote and be voted for. It affronts common sense for anyone to imagine that one-third members of the Senate can validly elect its leadership, under Section 50 of the Constitution…If it takes two-third majority of the members of the Senate to remove a senate president and his deputy once they are elected, why will one-third of the members be able to form an alleged quorum to elect the same officers?

Our third ground for reaching the conclusion that the election of Senator Bukola Saraki and Senator Ekweremadu as senate president and deputy senate president is a nullity is that the “election” was not in conformity with the spirit and letters of the Constitution. It did not pass the test of an inclusive and participatory democratic process under the Constitution. 57 senators or 75 senators cannot validly elect the leadership of the National Assembly, even if the Senate Rules were not doctored, save in the exceptional situations suggested above. Section 50. (1) of the Constitution provides that: “there shall be:- (a) a President and a Deputy President of the Senate, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves.” Under Section 50, there is no provision stipulating “one-third (1/3) of members of the Senate” as the quorum for the first “sitting” of the Senate where the Senate leadership is elected. Thus, the one-third quorum cannot and should not be imported into Section 50.

In electing the leadership of the Senate, the intendment of the framers of the Constitution is that all the senators, who are to be inaugurated and sworn in at that first “sitting” will assemble and be eligible to vote and be voted for. It affronts common sense for anyone to imagine that one-third members of the Senate can validly elect its leadership, under Section 50 of the Constitution, when the same Section 50 provides in subsection 2(c) thereof that : “the President or Deputy President of the Senate or the Speaker or Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives shall vacate his office – if he is removed from office by a resolution of the Senate or of the House of Representatives, as the case may be, by the votes of not less than two-thirds majority of the members of that House.” If it takes two-third majority of the members of the Senate to remove a senate president and his deputy once they are elected, why will one-third of the members be able to form an alleged quorum to elect the same officers?

In that so-called election, save the threesome of Governor Fayose’s Senators from Ekiti State, an Ogun State Senator and two Ondo State Senators, the peoples of South-West Nigeria did not participate in constituting the senate leadership. Two-third of the people of Benue State did not participate, Senators George Akume and Barnabas Gemade not being there. And largely the people of Kaduna, Kano and Katsina States did not participate, their elected senators not being in the Senate. This is not the kind of senate leadership election that is envisaged by the Constitution.

Under our formulated third ground, may we point out that it is not only because 51 senators and later 33 senators were disenfranchised and thus could not participate in the said “election” that we are contending that the election is a nullity, but also because almost half of the people of Nigeria were shut out of that process. The National Assembly is the first arm or branch of government, and the Nigerian people participate in its affairs through their elected representatives. In a representative democracy, legislators perform the functions of representation, legislation, appropriation, passing resolutions, oversight, and governance. Being representatives, when the senators are electing their leadership, they are direct electors representing indirect electors in their respective senatorial districts. They are like an electoral college. Therefore, if a fragment of the Senate engages in a conspiracy and chicanery to elect the senate leadership, in the absence of other senators, the right of Nigerians, who are being represented by those shut out senators, to participate in the government of their country is violated. The right of a people to participate in the government of their own country is an internationally recognised civil and political right.

We refuse to move on. A terrible unconstitutional precedent wittingly or unwittingly must not be created because the actors prefer to cut a deal and settle their differences. A fundamental breach of the provisions of the Constitution cannot be allowed to pass because the dramatis personae have agreed to share offices.

Let us put it more graphically. In that so called election, save the threesome of Governor Fayose’s Senators from Ekiti State, an Ogun State Senator and two Ondo State Senators, the peoples of South-West Nigeria did not participate in constituting the senate leadership. Two-third of the people of Benue State did not participate, Senators George Akume and Barnabas Gemade not being there. And largely the people of Kaduna, Kano and Katsina States did not participate, their elected senators not being in the Senate. This is not the kind of senate leadership election that is envisaged by the Constitution. Constitutional processes governing compositions of arms of government must not be reduced to a game of power-grabbing stratagem in which chicaners use foul means, to win, and gleefully declare thereafter: “I have defeated you, let us move on.”

The Senate should return to the path of constitutionalism and rule of law. The first “sitting” of the Senate has not taken place. All that has taken place is a cocktail of illegalities.

We refuse to move on. A terrible unconstitutional precedent wittingly or unwittingly must not be created because the actors prefer to cut a deal and settle their differences. A fundamental breach of the provisions of the Constitution cannot be allowed to pass because the dramatis personae have agreed to share offices. Did the President and the Vice President and the dissatisfied senators not swear to protect, defend and uphold the provisions of the Constitution?. They sure did. And now this is the litmus test.

The Senate should return to the path of constitutionalism and rule of law. The first “sitting” of the Senate has not taken place. All that has taken place is a cocktail of illegalities. All the senators must properly assemble, pursuant to the relevant constitutional provisions and Senate Standing Orders 2011; and the proclamation must be read to all of them. Thereafter, a proper roll call must be made and an election of which all senators and the entire Nigerian people shall be proud must be conducted. This is the way to change and govern a country.

Jiti Ogunye, lawyer, public interest attorney, legal commentator, author, and essayist, is the Legal adviser of Premium Times.