By Leo Sobechi
Abuja (Sundiata Post) – Speaker of House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, recently gave Nigerians strong verbal cues to recall the divisive events that defined the Eighth National Assembly (NASS). The occasion was when the leadership team of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms, led by Alhaji Dasuki Arab, paid a courtesy visit on the Speaker.
From inception through the four-year course of the immediate past NASS, the upper (Red) and lower (Green) chambers were divided along the lines of pro-independence versus pro-presidency legislators. While the then Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki and Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, were associated with the idea of maintaining legislative independence, the likes of current Senate President and Speaker, Ahmad Lawan and Gbajabiamila, pandered to the whims of the Presidency.
In his remarks on the occasion of the courtesy visit by the Arab-management team, Speaker Gbajabiamila upbraided the country’s service chiefs for failing to turn up for a scheduled meeting with the lawmakers to cross-fertilise ideas on the issue of securing the country.
The Speaker expressed dismay that apart from failing to attend the meeting, the service chiefs failed to send their regrets, threatening that he would report the security chiefs’ nonchalance to President Muhammadu Buhari.
So pained was the House leadership that they turned back representatives sent by the Chief of Defence Staff, Abayomi Olonisakin, Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Tukur Buratai, Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), Ibok Ekwe Ibas and the Chief of the Air Staff (CAF), Sadique Abubakar.
While describing the action of the top military brass as an insult to the parliament, Gbajabiamila said reporting them to President Buhari is an appropriate way to register the lawmakers’ displeasure, even as he postponed the meeting and apologized to Mohammed Adamu, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Yusuf Bichi and Muhammad Babandede, the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS) and Comptroller General (CG) of Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) respectively.
From his countenance, there was no doubt that Speaker Gbajabiamila was greatly distressed by the Service Chiefs’ failure to honour the House’s summons. But Nigerians remembered how a section of the lawmakers sided with the Service Chiefs and para-military personnel during the 8th plenary when they carried on as if they were above the law.
Attempts by the Saraki/Dogara led 8th NASS to bring the service chiefs to a round table discussion in effort to find solution to the spiraling insecurity in the country did not receive their buy-in even as the security chiefs were condoned by the likes of Gbajabiamila, who saw the plan as attempt to pin the tag of incompetence on President Buhari.
It was gathered that most Nigerians were not amused by the current Speaker’s outrage as the security chiefs served him and his colleagues their own hemlock, especially as he fumed: “This is an insult and a sad development, because all arms of government are supposed to work in unison for the development of the country and the benefit of Nigerians…