Members of the Kano State House of Assembly have insisted on removing the Speaker, Alhaji Abdullahi Yusuf Ata and other principal officers of the house. The move was truncated yesterday when heavily armed policemen, civil defence and DSS operatives blocked entrances to the assembly complex, thereby making it difficult for members to have access to the facility to perfect the impeachment.
The spokesman of the aggrieved lawmakers, Alhaji Baffa Babba Dan-Agenda, who confirmed the move to Daily Trust, said 21 out of the 40 members in the house had signed in support of the impeachment of the speaker and the entire principal officers of the house.
He said: “We have already made a quorum for the impeachment of the principal officers by having 21 lawmakers sign in support. We need only six members to make the requirement of 2/3 to impeach the speaker and the process is ongoing. I can assure you, we will succeed.”
Asked on the offences committed by the speaker that warranted impeachment, Dan-Agenda, a member representing Municipal Local Government Area in the house, said the reasons included incompetence, misappropriation of the house funds, lateness, misplacement of house mace, abandonment of constituency projects and creating divisions among members of the house.
“We always commence sitting after 2pm as against the usual 10am and even at that, things are not moving as expected. Although relationship between the legislative and executive was cordial but the speaker is not carrying all members along. We cannot just continue like that because we are representing our constituents,” he said.
He added that the speaker was also accused of interference in the activities of local governments, citing as example the recent suspension of the chairman of Danbatta Local Government Council. “The speaker also wanted to remove the chairman of Gaya Local Government Area of the state today (yesterday) if not because of this development. This is a clear indication that the man is going out of his jurisdiction and we will not allow this continue under our watch,” he added. When our reporter visited the house around 8am, there were about 10 police patrol vans stationed at strategic places within and outside the Audu Bako Secretariat where the assembly is also located.
According to Dan-Agenda, the security deployment to the house was aimed at scuttling the impeachment move, but assured that, “We will reconvene sitting because the security were misled in the whole issue.
When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer, SP Magaji Musa Majia, confirmed the deployment of armed policemen to the assembly. He said: “We deployed our men to the assembly to ensure that nobody broke law and order. We need peace in the state and therefore we will not allow anybody to tamper with existing peace and harmony being enjoyed by the people in the state.”
Commenting on the development, Speaker Ata said as a Muslim, he believed in good or bad destiny, and would therefore accept the impeachment in good faith.
He, however, said the impeachment attempt had nothing to do with competence, noting that “In anything there is starting and ending point. If Allah designed it that my time is up, nobody will extend it by a second and if it is otherwise, nobody can remove me from office that’s my belief.
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