Northern Youths Caution Buhari Over Gbajabiamila’s Role In Reps
Minority Principal Officers Crisis
The Northern Youths Movement (NYM) has told President Muhammadu Buhari
to be mindful of the use of the National Assembly to tarnish his
image, noting that the role being played by the House of
Representatives Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila in the appointment of House
Minority Principal Officers was capable of “splashing mud on the
President’s garment integrity.”
The NYM, which berated Gbajabiamila for turning himself to a maximum
ruler by openly threatening his fellow House members, noted that any
wrong that is done by any arm of the government will be blamed on
President Buhari when he leaves office.
The group, in a release issued in Abuja on Monday, which was signed by
its Chairman, Mallam Ishaya Jato, asked Gbajabiamila whether or not it
was his party that nominated and forwarded his name to the House of
Reps Speaker before he was appointed Minority Leader of the House of
Representatives in 2007 and 2011 as well as Majority Leader in 2015.
The youths said President Buhari and those around him should recall
that they were warned against the option of Gbajabiamila as Speaker
because of his arrogance and the plot to use him to advance the 2023
presidential ambition of his political godfather, adding that
threatening his colleagues, who disagreed with his decision to usurp
the power of the minority political party to appoint principal
officers as it happened in the case of the Speaker himself was a clear
sign as to the emergence of a “military speaker” in the House of Reps.
Fact is that the same process through which minority principal
officers were chosen in the Senate was the way those for the House of
Representatives were chosen by the PDP, a letter dated June 21, 2019
was sent to the Speaker and was duly received on June 26, 2019.
Why didn’t the Speaker read this letter in accordance with the House
rule that all correspondence must be read at the plenary?
Apart from the Speaker and Deputy, has there been any time since 1999
that majority and minority principal officers were elected? And if
minority principal officers are now by election, where is the record
of proceedings of the House sitting in which those appointed by
Gbajabiamila were elected?
If the Speaker’s godfather is comfortable that his political son has
descended to the gutter of dictatorship in less than one month of his
assumption of office, we don’t think the President, who is the leader
of the APC should.
This is because, in future, it is the name of the president that will
be mentioned and we hope our President is mindful of this.
As for the Lagos godfather of the Speaker, we in the NYM will keep
watching and see what he will tell Nigerians when he will finally let
the cat of his 2023 presidential ambition out of the bag.
