Why we voted APC’s Abbas as Speaker – Labour Party Rep

Denis Agbo, a member of the House of Representatives elected under the Labour Party (LP), has defended the decision of his colleagues from the same party, who voted the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Tajudeen Abbas, as Speaker of the 10th House of Representatives.

In the election held during the inauguration of the House on Tuesday, Abbas won with 353 votes, defeating Idris Wase and Sani Jaji, also of APC, who secured three votes each.

In an interview on Channels TV, Agbo explained that their initial plan was to support a candidate from the opposition for both Speaker and Deputy Speaker positions, but they eventually decided against it.

He said, “In the build up to the election, so many things happened at every point in time and at every junction. We belong to the minority caucus, we (LP) are number two after PDP then NNPP.

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“If you tally our numbers we had 183, 182 if you remove the person that died; we (opposition members) are the majority. There was a time we decided that the majority should carry the vot, but PDP has the largest number in the minority caucus with 116 members. APC (reps are) more than 170.

“We decided at that point we should even be able, with our number, to produce Speaker and the deputy. The Speaker was zoned to PDP and deputy to the Labour Party. A committee of 11 was set up to do the screening. We passed that stage.

“The progress continued, but at some point we decided that let the ruling party produce Speaker because they have 177 members, even larger than the PDP.

“Don’t forget among 182 people, you can’t expect to have every person in the minority caucus to speak with one voice. Interest started coming in. We were considering these things and strategising.”