There seems to be a crisis coming the way of the consensus candidate of the ruling All Progressive Candidate (APC) for the seat of the Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 10th National Assembly, Tajudeen Abbas.
OsunDaily News understands that lawmakers refused to honour a meeting called by the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, in a bid to sell Abbas’ candidacy.
It would be recalled that the APC National Working Committee(NWC) had zoned the Senate presidency to the South-South and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the North-West.
While, it announced Senator Godswill Akpabio as its consensus candidate for Senate presidency and Senator Jibrin Barau, as his deputy, the party zoned the Speakership of the House of Representatives to a Kaduna lawmaker, Abbas, while Ben Kalu, from South-East, clinched the Deputy Speaker slot.
However, other aspirants of the position have kicked against the party’s choice saying the APC should step down Abbas as the consensus candidate for Speakership.
It was gathered that a source who was at the meeting called by Gbajabiamila told Vanguard that the Speaker was not happy about the turnout at the meeting.
The source, who won elections to the house on the platform of the Labour Party said the meeting was called for both new and returning members.
He said the few members that attended the meeting were newbies like him who didn’t catch the glimpse that the gathering was for candidacy selling.
The source advanced that “Gbaja was not happy seeing the number of lawmakers in attendance and I think he has sensed danger, as an experienced politician, that his preferred candidate won’t fly.
“Some of my colleagues understood the reason for the meeting, but innocent me, like few of my friends I interacted with in the hall, didn’t get the notion behind the invitation until we got here and we decided to sit and listen to whatever they had to say.
“I was personally disappointed seeing just a few members in attendance because I had thought they got all the votes since it’s their party that selected this man for speaker.
“But since their members cannot honour their party, and most of them stayed off, is it those of us from the minorities that would support APC? Even though we are more than them in number, we would not be used to project mediocrity or support the composition of a rubber-stamp Assembly.
‘’The institution of the National Assembly is supposed to be an independent arm of government and not an appendage of another arm of government.”
