Nitiwul To Lose his Bimbila Seat?

...Challenge looms over his qualification

DOMINIC NITIWUL, the Member of Parliament (MP- elect) for Bimbilla, may be disqualified from sitting in the House for failing to do a one-year National Service on completion of his university course.

That would call for another by-election to be organised as soon as possible to fill the vacuum created by Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas in the 200-member House after he had accepted the post of Executive Secretary of ECOWAS.

According to Mr. Sackey, the Director of Administration at the Attorney-General’s Department, by law, everybody who enjoyed tertiary education has to do National Service before entering any public service, including parliament.

The Electoral Commission (EC) could not specifically say whether Hon. Nitiwul would be disqualified or not.

The Senior PRO, Mrs. Sylvia Annor, said the law that guides the Commission when accepting applications from prospective MPs is the Representation of the People’s Law (Act 284).

That law in brief specifies citizenship, age, residential and tax requirements that applicants have to fulfil.

So on Nitiwul, the PRO said “once he satisfied our requirements and we pronounced him winner, we have finished our job. But there are other legalities that may apply and can be found out from the A-G’s office.”

Nitiwul is said to be 25 years of age, a holder of first degree acquired last year from the Univesity College of Education, Winneba.

When contacted, the General Secretary of the NPP, Mr. Dan Botwe, said Nitiwul has not yet completed the degree programme and has, in fact, about a term to finish his sandwiched course.

Mr. Botwe, however, added that Nitiwul already holds a diploma and conceded that this requires a national service upon attainment. But when pressed to say clearly whether his MP had done the service, he declined to comment.

He rather asserted that national service is not a requirement at all for entering parliament, since being in the House is “not considered as employment.”

In any case, Botwe went on, one can do national service at any time and can, therefore, postpone it to a future date.

Again, he declined commenting as to whether Nitiwul was deferring his service to a future date.

On Monday when Nitiwul was approached on the issue, he told Chronicle that he taught on completion of training college from 1995 to 1997, and that fulfills the national service requirement.

Officials at the National Service Secretariat here in Accra, however, pointed out that non-graduate service was abolished at the end of the 1996 academic year.

Until the abolition, teaching upon graduating from a training college could be considered national service, but the duration was two years and not one as it is today, so explained Mr. E. A. Okine, an administrative officer at the Secretariat.

He said the only way to prove that Nitiwul had satisfied the condition would be for him to show a certificate to that effect.

As would be recalled, on March 14, Nitiwul made mincemeat of four other contestants, including an independent candidate, who vied with him for the vacant Bimbilla seat.

He polled 14,380 votes to beat his closest rival, Mohammed Ibn Abass of the NDC who polled 9,091 votes to place a distant second position, while the remaining votes went nowhere near 2000.

Still basking in the election victory glory, Nitiwul told a press conference, on Monday that his name means that “it pains” his opponents. But with his disqualification looming so ominously, will any of his opponents have the last laugh?

Dr. Edward Mahama, whose PNC has a bitter quarrel with the NPP over the choice of Nitiwul as a candidate, unfortunately declined to comment on the issue when approached.

He, in fact, disclosed that he would never talk about that man.