Reps: Gbajabiamila, APC’s Speaker Designate
Signs of division within the ranks of the lawmakers were evident as loyalists of the two warring parties, Femi Gbajabiamila and Yakubu Dogara, were seen wearing vests and caps with pictures of their chosen candidates embossed on them.
However, those wearing insignia of Gbajabiamila were more in number, a development that almost led to a fistcuff when the National Chairman of the party, John Odigie-Oyegun in commencing the meeting, instructed all members to do away with anything that signifies campaign for any particular candidate.
The shout of “no, no, no” rented the air as protesting members voiced their displeasure to the directive. However, without any explanations, loyalists of both candidates threw caution to the winds and started shouting at each other.
It took the intervention of the party chairman to save the day as he announced to the warring parties the presence of newsmen at the event. Journalists were thereafter asked to vacate the hall as the meeting went into a closed door session.
While journalists stayed outside, taking shade under trees outside the hall, cacophony of noises made by angry members were heard as the meeting became more rowdy.
At about 1:00pm, it started raining heavily, a development which forced newsmen and other party faithful who were not allowed into the hall, to scamper for a bigger shade beside the African Hall of the International Conference Centre (ICC) some 60 meters distance from the venue within the premises used for the meeting.
At about 2:00pm, National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Lai Mohammed came out of the meeting venue and announced to waiting newsmen that the party has decided to conduct a mock election to pick a candidate to be sponsored for the election on Tuesday as the official candidate of the party.
Mohammed said the party took the option of picking a specific candidate for the Speakership because it does not want to give an impression of having a divided house and a disunited party where indiscipline reigns.
However, the decision of the party to conduct the mock election did not go down well with the camp of Dogara who kicked stoically against it. According to them, the party leaders did not tell them ahead that such a mock election will be held and therefore, majority of their supporters were not present at the event.
But the National Chairman of the party, John Oyegun announced that 183 members out of the 213 members elected on the platform of the party signed the attendance register before the meeting commenced.
A total of 30 members did not attend the meeting at all.
The insistence of the party leaders to conduct the mock election did not go down well with the Dogara group who stormed out of the meeting while accusing the party leaders of bias.
Led by Abdulmumin Jibrin a member from Kano who stepped down from the race a week ago in support of Dogara, the dissenting group alleged that the party leaders are being unfair to them, as they accused the party leaders of leaking the secret of mock election to Gbajabiamila camp, giving him an edge to mobilizing his supporters to be present at the event while his own supporters were not present.
He described the plot to hold the mock election as undemocratic.
His words: “Our party, the APC, called a meeting of all members-elect this morning, from the point of our arrival we noticed a lot of strange happenings, we noticed a lot of campaign going on, we thought that the party invited us to give us the last word of advice before going into the elections. The National Chairman made his opening remarks and thereafter announced that there is going to be a straw-election, which he interpreted as a primary election.
“He of course drew our attention to the presidential primary that was held where President Muhammed Buhari emerged as the presidential candidate then.
“When we noticed that things weren’t going the way they should, we drew the attention of the National chairman and we told him four clear things
“Number one; we reminded the national chairman that the leader of the party and the president of the country, President Muhammadu Buhari, has stated very clearly, the President said, “it doesn’t matter where he or she comes from, there is due process for the selection of leaders of the National Assembly and I will not interfere with the process, Nigeria has indeed entered a new dispensation, my? administration does not intend to repeat the same mistakes made by previous governments, the President made this on the 27th of May.”
“So we asked the National chairman, it is either he was not in agreement with the statement of the President or he is not accepting the fact that the President is the leader of the party.”
“Secondly, we drew the attention of the national chairman that the two aspirants that are in the race are all of the APC, why shouldn’t he allow us to go to the floor of the House and determine who leads the 8th Assembly of House of Representatives, you have no reason to be worry because both aspirants are from the party.
“So we are surprised why they are trying to force us into a process which we stated clearly that there is no provision of primaries for the speakership of the House of Representatives in the constitution of the APC, there is no provision of primaries for speakership in the constitution of Nigeria.
“We have stated this very clearly and that we told him that this primaries that he has called, he called it without notice and for us we interpreted it as an ambush, an ambush against the candidature of Hon Yakubu Dogara, we were not informed, the meeting is not advertised, a lot of members were actually out of Abuja at the moment and we requested for just one simple thing, we said look if the party will be fair, postpone whatever you want to do even if you want to try out something but he was adamant, we said give us notice till tomorrow, the party chairman said no, the election must go ahead.
“We are taking out time to explain all these so that the public will understand that, it is not that we are disrespecting the leadership of our party but we have to get things right in this country.
“And finally, our position, we told the national chairman that we will not participate in an election that is impromptu, it is obvious that this is pre-determined, the other aspirants mobilised his people very well and we are not informed, we were just giving the impression that it is going to be a meeting of blessing for all aspirants and today we are seeing something different.
“We have stated it clearly, we’ll not participate in this election, it undermines the constitution of the APC, it undermines the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria, our position is one and only, the next Speaker of the House of Representatives should be decided on the floor of the House on Tuesday the 9th of June 2015, that is what the constitution provided and that is our own position”.
However, after the departure of Dogara and some members, the election was held.
In conducting the election, the attendance register at the event was used in calling out members, who answer to their names, collect the ballot paper, cast their votes in secret and drop same into a box provided for such.
At the end of the voting, Gbajabiamila emerged victorious with 154 votes, Dogara had 3 votes, 4 votes were voided.
The result showed that aside from the 30 members who didn’t show up at the event, 22 of those who attended the event did not participate in the voting exercise.
Mohammed Monguno who stepped down to run as Deputy Speaker candidate to Gbajabiamila also won as though he was returned unopposed, he still polled 153 votes while 8 votes were voided of the 161 votes cast.
Femi Gbajabiamila in his acceptance speech thanked his colleagues for the confidence reposed in him and promised to provide the much needed leadership they sought for as the 8th Assembly kick off.
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