Abdulameed Kwarra, a former majority leader of the Nasarwa State House of Assembly on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party and now the Special Adviser to Governor Tanko Al-Makura on Public Affairs, has said that the state Lawmakers failed in their bid to impeach the governor because they did not play by the rules.

Kwarra admitted to have taught the state Lawmakers how to impeach the governor, however, added that they did not follow the exact procedures in a recent interview with The Punch. He said: “It is true that in 2011, the current legislators asked me, as a consultant to the Nasarawa State House of Assembly, to conduct a retreat to expose them to legislative practice and procedure.

Legislative practice and procedure entails a vast area of legislative responsibilities and duties, which include, first and foremost, legislative ethics, conducts and behaviours; two, understanding the practice procedure of the House of Assembly; and three, the process of lawmaking and parliamentary procedure, the supremacy of the constitution and principle of separation of powers, and power of investigation, or rather, official function of the assembly. “There were also issues of legislative-executive relationship, policy of appropriation, budget system and public account.

The sum total of these entails what is called the legislative practice and procedure. That was what I trained them on. Indeed, impeaching the governor or removal of public office holders is part of the function of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly. So, I took them on a wide range of all their powers.

“They claimed I taught them how to impeach the governor but they did not follow the rules I taught them. To impeach, you must comply strictly with each and every procedure right from section 188; but in the case of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly from the first sitting, they had misfired. And let me give you two reasons why: one, they compromised Section 103 of the Constitution which has to do with the committee of the House; the constitution says you cannot delegate the function of the House to a committee.

In their opening preamble of the so-called impeachment allegations against the governor, they acted on the basis of the committee reports. Secondly, they referred to Section 128, which is about the power to conduct an inquiry and investigation or what we popularly called oversight function.

Here again, the House of Assembly misfired because that section talks about carrying out investigations with the objective of exposing corruption, fraud, mismanagement of public resources and to detect any defects in the law with the purpose of amending such a law. If you look at it, they did not do exactly what I asked them to do. In fact, I taught them about control of public funds from section 120 up to 126. I told them about their functions, but unfortunately they did not do exactly what I taught them. So, they are on their own; that is not what I taught them.”