There was another round of unease at the House of Representatives during plenary on Tuesday, as members elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), staged a walk out over Federal Government’s indefinite suspension of the operations of Twitter in Nigeria.
NaijaNewsNow reports that deliberations took another turn when the PDP caucus leader in the House, Kingsley Chinda was ruled out of order by the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila.
Earlier, Gbajabiamila had disclosed that the joint committees on Communication, Information, Justice, and National Security would investigate the legality of the Twitter suspension and report back to the House within 10 days.
However, Chinda (PDP Rivers) said waiting for ten days for the committee to report back to the House would amount to the suspension remaining for another ten days.
He said: “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 a 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.”
The Speaker however 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.
Chinda in response, insisted that members of the PDP caucus in the House will continue to tweet in disregard to the suspension.
