As the clamour for the leadership of the two chambers of the National Assembly continues, Senate leader Victor Ndoma-Egba (SAN) has declared   that there is no law in the constitution excluding members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from running for the positions.

Ndoma-Egba also blamed PDP governors for the party’s defeat at the just concluded general elections, saying their imposition of unpopular candidates made the party lose votes.

He made these statements over the weekend while delivering a paper on “Majority and Minority Parties in the Legislature: Party Defection (Cross-carpeting in the Legislature)” at the induction course for legislators-elect of the 8th National Assembly at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.

On the issue of who will occupy leadership positions in both chambers of the National Assembly, the Senate leader explained that the constitution is silent on the political parties which will produce them.

On the ruling party’s loss at the polls, Ndoma-Egba said the road to the March 28/April 11 electoral defeat of the PDP started from the December 2014 primaries when the governors deliberately shut out popular candidates and imposed theirs on the party, leading to an exodus of unhappy party men from the PDP without any corresponding influx.

“After the last so-called primaries, there was a lot of traffic out of the PDP and no corresponding traffic into it. The party simply imploded under the weight of governors’ impunity and arrogance. The PDP carefully choreographed its downfall. It worked very hard at it and got the result it deserved,” the Senate leader, himself a victim of such scheming, stated.

LEADERSHIP recalls that following the massive defeat of the PDP in the last elections, the All Progressives Congress (APC) seized majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate, putting it in a vantage position to produce the speaker, Senate president and their deputies.

Speaking on the defection of members to opposition parties, Ndoma-Egba explained that politicians “defect because their former party squeezed them out, or – in the case of the PDP recently, that they did not fit within the governors’ calculations. In my view, since every politics is local, each case should be treated on its merit.”

He warned, however, that unbridled defection had the capacity of not only overheating the polity and upsetting the entire political configuration, but destabilising the polity.

“While the law has clearly stated the circumstances under which a person elected on the platform of a political party can switch parties, nothing restricts those who are not in the legislature from switching parties,” he added.

The ranking senator also spoke on the need for internal democracy to prevail rather than the wishes of few governors.

He said: “The phenomenon will endure for as long as ownership of political parties is not with its members but with, as in the case of the PDP, governors. Governors (especially of the PDP) have become so overbearing that it is only their wishes that rule. The party (at the national level) suborns its constitution, guidelines and even court orders to please the whims and fancies of governors who appropriate the will of members and impose theirs in its stead.

“This has bred sycophancy, impunity and arrogance, and eroded internal party democracy. Within the parties, especially the PDP, government is no longer of the people and for the people; it is now government of governors, by governors and for governors. This has resulted in brazen injustice and restricted the political space for many.”

Declaring no party can offer the country what it does not have, Ndoma-Egba noted that “a party that does not have internal party democracy can only falsely promise the nation democracy.”