ABSTRACT

The litigation over the suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has been narrated almost universally as a contest between two arms of government: the Senate asserting unreviewable authority over its internal discipline, and the courts asserting their supervisory jurisdiction.

This article challenges that framing on two connected grounds. First, the two-party picture omits the electorate, identified by section 14(2)(a) of the 1999 Constitution of the

Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) as the bearer of sovereignty and the actual holder of

the senatorial seat; the contest is properly a triangle in which the voters of Kogi Central are a

constitutional party in their own right. Secondly, the Senate’s claim of unreviewable

competence under section 60 rests on a residual parliamentary-sovereignty premise that the

Constitution itself has displaced. Through doctrinal analysis of sections 1, 4, 6, 14, 60 and 287

of the 1999 Constitution, and by drawing on Inakoju v Adeleke, Speaker of the National

Assembly v De Lille, Raja Ram Pal v Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, Bradlaugh v Gossett and

Military Governor of Lagos State v Ojukwu, the article shows that constitutional supremacy

under section 1(3) is incompatible with the Diceyan parliamentary sovereignty the Senate’s

posture impliedly assumes, and that the doctrine in Ojukwu against governmental lawlessness

must extend to legislative as well as executive defiance. It recommends a reconception of the

separation of powers in Nigeria as a tripartite arrangement in which the electorate is a distinct

constitutional stakeholder.

Keywords: Constitutional supremacy; Electoral sovereignty; Parliamentary privilege;

Separation of powers; Trilemma.

1. INTRODUCTION

Almost every account of the litigation surrounding Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan

v Clerk of the National Assembly & 3 Ors1 tells the same story: a fight between the Senate and

the courts. The Senate says it can discipline its own members as it pleases; the court says it

cannot do so in a way that breaches the Constitution. Two players, one fight. That picture is the

orthodoxy. This article argues that it is wrong on two fronts.

There are not two players in this dispute, there are three. The voters of Kogi Central are

the people who actually own the seat, and any honest account of the case has to put them in the

room. And the Senate’s whole claim to be the final judge of its own conduct rests on an old

British idea of parliamentary sovereignty, which Nigeria quietly walked away from when it

1Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan v Clerk of the National Assembly & 3 Ors (Suit No FHC/ABJ/CS/384/2025,

Federal High Court of Nigeria, Abuja Judicial Division, judgment of Nyako J, 4 July 2025), (2026) 1 LEXELR

121 (CA).adopted its current constitutional order. The article identifies these two misframings as a single

problem: the persistence in Nigerian legal thought of habits that no longer match the

Constitution Nigeria adopted.

The method is doctrinal and comparative. The article works through sections 1, 4, 6, 14,

60 and 287 of the 1999 Constitution, and reads them against the leading domestic authority in

Inakoju v Adeleke, the South African authority in Speaker of the National Assembly v De Lille,

the Indian authority in Raja Ram Pal v Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha, the English authority in

Bradlaugh v Gossett, and the Nigerian doctrine against governmental lawlessness in Military

Governor of Lagos State v Ojukwu. The scope is confined to the architecture of separation of

powers and the status of legislative self-regulation; the underlying merits of the disciplinary

complaint are not in issue.

After this introduction, section 2 sets out the familiar picture of the separation of powers

and shows why the case appears, on that picture, to be a turf war. Section 3 restores the missing

third party, the electorate, and reframes the dispute as a triangle. Section 4 traces the Senate’s

posture to a borrowed and now-outdated theory of parliamentary sovereignty. Section 5 shows

how constitutional supremacy dissolves that posture and extends to the latest worry in the case

of the legislative defiance of the 4 July judgment. Section 6 concludes.

2. THE FAMILIAR PICTURE

The standard way of thinking about Nigerian government goes back to Montesquieu:

three arms of government, one to make law, one to carry it out, and one to decide what it means.2

Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution gives lawmaking to the National Assembly; section 5 gives

execution to the President; section 6 gives the courts the job of resolving disputes.3 Section 60

then says each House of the National Assembly may regulate its own procedure.4

On this picture, Akpoti-Uduaghan looks like a border quarrel. Where does the Senate’s

right to run its own affairs end? Where does the court’s power to review begin? Two arms of

government, drawing lines on a map. It is a tidy picture. It is also incomplete.

2C de S Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (A M Cohler, B C Miller and H S Stone trs and eds, Cambridge

University Press 1989) 156–157.

3Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), ss 4–6.

4ibid s 60.3. THE MISSING PARTY

The opening words of the Constitution’s chapter on government policy say that

sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria, and that the government’s powers come from

them.5 The Constitution also promises that the people will take part in their own government.6

These are not decorative lines, interpretatively, they mean the voters of Kogi Central are not

bystanders to their senator’s suspension, i.e., they are the holders of the seat. Accordingly, when

the senator is silenced, they are silenced.

The South African Supreme Court of Appeal said as much in De Lille: a suspension

does not just punish a member, it punishes the voters who put her there.7 Once you take that

point seriously, the case looks different, as it is not a duel between two institutions, but rather,

it is a triangle: the Senate (which wants room to run itself), the courts (which must protect the

Constitution), and the voters (whose right to be represented is the whole point of having a

Senate at all).

Without any gainsay, this matters in practice, because if a court thinks it is only

refereeing a turf war, stepping in feels like favouring one arm of government over another. But

if the court is protecting the voters’ right to representation, holding back is what looks wrong,

this is because the voters have no other forum. Reframing the case as a triangle changes which

way restraint cuts.

4. THE OLD BRITISH IDEA

The Senate’s deeper position, though it does not always say so out loud, comes from an

idea that belongs to another country. A.V. Dicey, the Victorian writer who shaped how lawyers

talk about the British constitution, taught that Parliament could make or unmake any law, that

no one could set its laws aside, and that the courts would not look into how it ran its own affairs.8

That last point is captured in the old English case of Bradlaugh v Gossett, where the courts

refused to interfere with how the House of Commons managed its own internal business.9 The

5ibid s 14(2)(a).

6ibid s 14(2)(c).

7Speaker of the National Assembly v De Lille 1999 (4) SA 863 (SCA).

8A V Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (10th edn, Macmillan 1959) 39–40.

9Bradlaugh v Gossett (1884) 12 QBD 271.Senate’s claim that section 60 gives it the final word on internal discipline is, at heart, this

Diceyan idea wearing Nigerian clothes.

The trouble is that Nigeria never adopted that idea. From the 1979 Constitution onwards,

the Nigerian state has not been built on the sovereignty of the legislature; it has been built on

the sovereignty of the Constitution itself.10 What the Senate inherited from Westminster was a

set of habits. What it did not inherit was the theory that once justified those habits. Holding on

to the habits after the theory has been thrown out is the contradiction at the heart of the case.

5. THE CONSTITUTION AS THE FINAL WORD

Section 1(1) of the 1999 Constitution says it is supreme and binds every authority and

person in Nigeria. Section 1(3) goes further: any law that conflicts with it is, to that extent,

void.11 In a country whose Constitution speaks in those terms, no institution can claim a power

the Constitution itself does not give it.

Three lines of authority make the point. At home, Inakoju v Adeleke says that no clause

attempting to keep the courts out, and no power to regulate one’s own affairs, can shield an

unconstitutional act from review.12 Abroad, De Lille held that parliamentary privilege is invalid

to the extent it clashes with the Constitution, and that the task of ensuring the Constitution is

supreme falls to the courts.13 In India, Raja Ram Pal v Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha drew the

line in almost identical terms: the courts will not review a mere procedural irregularity in

Parliament, but they will review serious illegality or breach of the Constitution.14 The thread is

the same in all three. Self-regulation is the right to choose how you do something, not a licence

to do something the Constitution forbids.

The same logic answers the latest worry in the case. The Clerk of the National Assembly

has so far refused to give effect to the 4 July 2025 judgment, citing the fact that an appeal is

pending. Section 287 of the Constitution requires every authority and person to enforce a

decision of the Federal High Court.15 The principle in Military Governor of Lagos State v

Ojukwu, that no arm of government may set itself above the law, was first stated against the

10B O Nwabueze, The Presidential Constitution of Nigeria (C Hurst & Co 1982) 1–3.

11Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (n 3) s 1(1) and (3).

12Inakoju v Adeleke [2007] 4 NWLR (Pt 1025) 423.

13De Lille (n 7).

14Raja Ram Pal v Hon’ble Speaker, Lok Sabha (2007) 3 SCC 184.

15Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (n 3) s 287.executive, but nothing in it limits its reach to the executive only.16 A Constitution that does not

tolerate executive disobedience cannot tolerate legislative disobedience either.

6. CONCLUSION

Two old habits of mind deserve to be retired. The first is the idea that the Senate is the

final judge of its own boundaries. Section 60 grants a power to choose its own procedure; it

does not grant immunity from the Constitution. The second is the picture of separation of

powers as a duel between the legislature and the judiciary. The truth, in cases like this one, is

that there is always a third party in the room, i.e., the voters, and a court that forgets them has

missed half the case. Akpoti-Uduaghan puts both points on the table. Whether Nigerian law is

ready to settle them is the question this case asks.

16Military Governor of Lagos State v Ojukwu [1986] 1 NWLR (Pt 18) 621.