Information reaching 247ureports.com from sources within the National Assembly indicates that the brewing battle inside the House of Representatives is not over. This is as one of the vocal members of the South East House of Representative Caucus and ranking Representative indicated that they would reintroduce the South East Development Commission Bill which was shouted down at the last seating of the house.
This comes as the members of the House of Representatives exhibited uninhibited gull in suppressing the voices of the representatives from the South East geopolitical zone through cooperation with the leadership of the House of Representative as the Bill on South East Development Commission was presented on the floor of the House of Representatives. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dogara was charged with siding with the Northern majority in shutting down the Bill when it was introduced.
According to the ranking member who spoke to 247ureports.com, the Speaker of the House aired on the wrong said when the Bill was presented to the floor of the House and a vote was called for. “South East Caucus was convinced that the “Ayes” carried the day, but the Speaker curiously ruled otherwise“.
Concerns were raised as to why the Speaker and his co-travelers would be so determined to halt the Bill from reaching the level. The ranking member “wondered why it should be so since the bill is not demanding extra funding from the Federal Government for the South East, but just a legal platform to harness resources for rebuilding South East, which the Federal Government failed to do despite declaring the three Rs after the war“.
In talking to the leadership of the House of Representative, they pleaded for calm. Speaking through the Chairman House Committee Media and Publicity Hon. Abdulrazak Namdas, the leadership of the House of Representatives stated,
“This profession has ethics, was it the ‘nays’ or ‘ayes’ that had it, which one? Not to prolong it, the truth is that I am a member of the house of representatives and my colleagues are also members and it is natural that everybody will for like something to go to his place and I share in what ever thing they struggling to have because every body wants to have something.
“But the issue is that the national assembly, the house of representatives is guided by some rules and regulations, you have to follow certain procedures and if a ruling has been made, there is nothing I can say here now that will reverse what has taken place in plenary. I will only plead that our colleagues should calm down.
“We will be talking ourselves because we need them and they need us and we will see what happens as we reconvene, I appreciate that they voiced out their anger and democrats we have to take it and we move on from there”.
