The spokesperson of House of Representatives, Rep. Benjamin Kalu (APC, Abia,) has described the call for President Muhammadu Buhari’s removal as a lone agenda of Rep. Kingsley Chinda (PDP, Rivers).
In a statement on Monday, Kalu stated that the attention of the House and its leadership had been drawn to the press release by Kingsley Chinda, titled “Nigeria saddled with the circus” published in most dailies on the 6th of December, 2020, calling on constituents irrespective of political party, tribe or religion to compel their representatives to commence impeachment process against the president.
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He said the opinion of a single member of the opposition party in the house had been misinterpreted as the voice of the entire House of Representatives when it does not represent the weakest opinion of the minority-caucus of the 9th House.
“Even among the minority caucus, Hon Kingsley Chinda lost the opportunity to speak for the entire minority when he lost the minority leadership election to Hon Ndudi Elumelu, the minority leader of the 9th Assembly, a wound that has refused to heal.
“It is the structure of the minority caucus leadership and majority caucus leadership that is recognised by the house as any statement not emanating from these and the spokesperson of the house does not, in any way reflect either the minority, majority or general position of the 9th House of Representatives and should be disregarded like his other divisive, distracting, destabilising and destructive positions.
“Just last week, the speaker warned the media to desist from ascribing to the house the opinion of a single member, since we have a spokesperson,” he said.
According to him, the motive behind Chinda’s press release as well as the timing leaves a bitter taste in the mouth of most progressives who were instructed by their constituents to request for an interaction with the president.
Kalu noted that many Nigerians thought it was not possible for the President to address the House seeing that in the history of Nigeria’s recent democracy none of the past presidents honoured the parliamentary request for an interactive session and none of the past leaderships of the assembly was able to use parliamentary back channel diplomacy, like it was adopted and applied by the current leadership to secure the acceptance of the President to the invitation.
“If this call came post President’s visit for the failure to dialogue well enough in securing solutions or due to his inability to put our positions to use, it would appear logical.
“This call is not only illogical, it appears as a tool strategically thrown up to disrupt the agenda of the coming visit with all it sets out to achieve in the spirit of nation building which remains the mantra of the 9th Assembly and is considered a joint task,” Kalu added.
Wrongful call
According to the Spokesperson, in view of the 9th Assembly stand , the call was made wrongfully to distract the members whose minds are set on the visit and the expected achievements.
“It is surprising, that Hon Kingsley Chinda, was among those who insisted on the invitation of the president , probably expecting a gross disregard from the president who surprisingly broke the jinx and kindly obliged our request.
“Isn’t it obvious that apparently shocked by the acceptance of Mr. President , he is on a new lonely voyage of personal agenda strange to the legislative agenda of the house and leadership.
“Where was his constitutional impeachment voice when his previous presidents of PDP extractions were invited but ignored the house , wondering why he is just remembering his constitution now that a president is coming to accept our inputs to the solutions he is seeking.
“I therefore, assure Nigerians that having asked us to invite Mr President , which we have done , you should be patient to wait for the outcome of our meeting, before been misled by a alone voice on the frolic of his own, whose private opinion in no way represents the position of the House of Representatives.
“We have only invited Mr. President for an interactive session and cannot be distracted by those with other self not house motivated agenda,” he added.
It could be recalled that, Rep. Chinda had in a statement on behalf of the PDP House Caucus on Sunday urged constituents to compel their representatives in the House to beging impeachment prosess against the President.
“We call on Nigerians across tribe, religion and political party to wake up their National Assembly Members” and compel them to commence impeachment process against President Buhari to save Nigeria,”Chinda advised.
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