ABUJA — The House of Representatives on Tuesday divided over the debate on the legality of the indefinite suspension of the social media giant, Twitter.
Lawmakers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) caucus staged a walk out of the House sitting when the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, ruled out of order the leader of the party, Kingsley Chinda, in the House on the issue of the Twitter ban by the Federal Government.
While welcoming members back to the plenary, the Speaker mandated the joint committee on Communication, Information, Justice, and National Security to investigate the legality of the ban of microblogging by the government and report back to the House in 10 days.
However, the opposition lawmakers’ leader said waiting for ten days for the committee to report back to the House would amount that the ban will remain for another ten days.
He argued that “Mr. Speaker, I stand on section 39 of the Nigerian constitution, section 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human and Peoples right and article 9 of the African Charter of Human and Peoples right.
“As a representative of the people, I have a source of communication with my constituents; I have a source of interaction with my leaders. But in moving this, I must, with all sense of responsibility, commend the steps you took this morning concerning this issue of the ban of Twitter. It was very proactive, very timely.
“But my concern is that as a Nigerian and several other Nigerians out there, the implication is that for the ten days you have given that committee to work, this breach will continue. We don’t even know for how long our interaction with the Executive arm will last.
“While I agree with the submission of the leadership of this House completely, I will only want to add that for the breach of our fundamental human right, particularly the right to a fair hearing, right to freedom of speech and expression, we should urge the Executive arm in the interim to reverse the ban pending our interaction with the Executive.”
But the Speaker ruled him out of order saying since the matter has been referred to a committee already, it was wrong for the matter to be revived again.
Speaker said; “Let me quickly refer you to order 9, rule 1 sub-rule 6 of our rules which state that it shall be out of order to reconsider any specific question upon which the House has come to a conclusion during the current session except upon a substantive motion for rescission.
“This matter has already been sent to the committees to look at the issues you are talking about and will report to us within ten days. Even if you had brought a motion here, it would have been referred to a committee. We are not even sure if your motion would not have been killed. This day, we have saved the day. So you are ruled out of order.”
At this point, all efforts by Chinda to be heard were unsuccessful as the House Leader, Alhassan Ado Doguwa, and Chief Whip, Mohammed Tahir Monguno, asking him to be guided
Chinda and members of the caucus then walked out of the plenary to address the press on their grievances, insisting that members of the PDP caucus in the House will continue to tweet in disregard to the ban.
