The Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has come under attack over his recent
threat to report the service chiefs to President Muhammadu Buhari, for failing
to honour an invitation to a meeting on security.
Gbajabiamila gave the warning in
Abuja on Wednesday when the management of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms
led by the Director-General, Mr Dasuki Arabi, visited him.
Reacting, however, the Arewa
Citizens for Democracy (ACD) said the fact that Gbajabiamila could only threaten
to report the service chiefs to President Buhari is an admission of his
screaming incompetence.
“He is aware that he does not
possess the powers he attempted to exercise over the military,” AbdulGafar
Usman, President of ACD said at a press conference on Sunday in Kaduna.
Usman said instead of making
trouble for the military or anyone within the security architecture, the
Speaker with the other members of the House should come up with innovative ways
of providing a budget that makes it possible for the military to get the
equipment needed to fight terrorists.
His speech below.
We express our disappointment
with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Honourable Femi
Gbajabiamila, who threw all the honour accruable to his person and position away
to cast aspersions on the office and persons of our great nation’s security
chiefs.
The Speaker, under the guise of
ventilating his anger over the non-appearance of the military chief before the
House, threatened to report them to President Muhammadu Buhari.
He also went ahead to castigate
them not minding that these are men that have given more to Nigeria in the past
five years than the Speaker can give in five lifetimes even if he lives to be a
thousand years in each life.
Arewa Citizens for Democracy
(ACD) is of the view that rather than throwing decorum to the dogs and embark
on the ranting show he put on for the entire world, the Speaker should have
search deep within himself and his institution, the National Assembly, to
understand why the Military chiefs did not show up even when invited.
We make this point without
prejudice to the reasons that kept the security bosses away, especially when
they made it their duty to delegate worthy and competent representatives to
appear before the lawmakers. We shall call the attention of the Speaker to a
few some realities that he may be deliberately ignoring but which right
thinking Nigerians are aware of.
We all know that there is not
much that happens when the House of Representatives invites public office
holders and heads of agencies to appear before them. It is often nothing but an
extortion racket, something they use to blackmail the invited persons to pay
bribes to lawmakers from the budget of their organizations. It is on record
that even when the public officers in question do appear before the House or
its committees, it is often the subordinate officers with jurisdiction for the
areas of interest that eventually answer all the question being posed.
The office holder is only
compelled to put in appearance to make sure he is on ground to negotiate the
bribes to be paid. For a country that is battling a terrorist insurgency
Gbajabiamila should have known better than trying to coax money out of the
military chiefs.
In addition to monetary
considerations, the other thing that makes lawmakers summon office holders to
appear before them in person is usually to shore up their fledging images.
With Nigeria running smoothly
under the able leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari, the lawmakers have
been removed from the limelight, which is an opportunity the should have
exploited to do their legislative duties.
But it seems the Speaker is
unable to survive in this manner and had to go shopping for another made for
television reality show that the House of Representatives has over time proven
to be addicted to. Taking on the military bosses is nothing but cheap grandstanding
for publicity.
The Speaker can do better and he
should.
The fact that Gbajabiamila could
only threaten to report the service chiefs to President Buhari is an admission
of his screaming impotence. He is aware that he does not possess the powers he
attempted to exercise over the military.
He bluffed and the military
commanders who knew who they are called his bluff hence the face saving resort
to threatening to report them to Mr. President as they were some schoolyard
bullies to be reported to the Principal by a whimpering nerd. But these are
security chiefs that are doing their best such that there is currently no
security threat that is not been handled decisively.
We must not neglect to look at
the security ramifications of what the Speaker and his colleagues wanted to do.
They wanted to subject discussion of sensitive security operations to the
vagaries of a political circus.
They would have of course held
ceremonial session before devolving into a closed door session. The only
problem is that the House has its fair share of closet Boko Haram members who
will divulge details of such meetings and other security strategies to the
terrorists. It will not be surprising if the pressure to have the military
leaders appear to discuss their strategy is because of the losses the
terrorists have suffered in recent times.
Gbajabiamila must therefore not
use the House as the leaking conduit to extract and pass information to Boko
Haram. The Speaker is now under obligation to clearly come out and defend himself
in this matter of his recent naked dance of shame because his conduct suggests
that he was the mole that many of his colleagues had hinted at in the run up to
the Speakership election.
From the foregoing, it is glaring
that Rt, Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila is yet to appreciate that he is no longer
the minority leader, he is not even in the opposition anymore yet he behaves
with all the absence of decorum that characterized that fraction of politicians
in Nigeria.
He must wake up to the reality of
being the Speaker of the House of Representatives and stop throwing the kind of
tantrum that is not even seen among pre-schoolers. His duty includes finding
practical solutions to whatever shortcomings exist, assuming he finds any, and
not grandstand.
It is our fervent hope that the
Speaker will rediscover the decent part of himself and meet off camera with the
security chiefs to tender his unreserved apology to them. They deserve to hear
it from him and there is no need to continue making a matter for public
discourse of because it has potential to distract everyone from the task at
hand.
Instead of making trouble for the
military or anyone within the security architecture, the Speaker with the other
members of the House should come up with innovative ways of providing a budget
that makes it possible for the military to get the equipment needed to fight
terrorists.
The parliament must also look at
how to amend existing terrorism related legislation especially changes that
will block foreign financing of terrorists and curtail the unwieldy influence
of international organizations that are making the counter-terrorism operations
difficult.
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