A recent Daily Trust online poll has shown that about 43% of Nigerians approve of defections by National Assembly members from one party to another.
The respondents also think that the seats of such lawmakers should not be declared vacant as been proposed in some quarters.
Out of a total of two thousand, one hundred and sixty four voters (2164), 25.9% think the lawmakers’ seats should be declared vacant, while another 13.9s% say such seats should be declared vacant only if the constituencies they represent reject their defection to other political parties. Another 25.9% backed the call for the lawmakers’ seats to be declared vacant.
In the last few months, a number of legislators have cross carpeted to other political platforms which they believe could give them better chances of either picking election tickets or returning as political officers in next year’s general elections.
In December last year, the leadership of the People’s Democratic Party PDP had gone to court praying that the seats of its members who defected to the opposition party APC should be declared vacant. But a Federal High Court had granted an interlocutory injunction restraining the party, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC and the Senate President and Speaker of House of Representatives from declaring the seats of the defecting federal lawmakers vacant.
