Why we reject APC leadership nominees for principal offices, by Dogara

Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives, has ex- plained the rationale behind the Thursday, 25th June face-off on the floor of the House.

In his explanation, Dogara dis- closed that the crisis was caused by insistence of majority of the lawmakers across political divide to uphold the provisions of the Constitution and federal character in the choice of the four principal officers rather than the party’s recommendation.

The Speaker made the clarifi- cation while addressing Forum of former members led by Dauda Bundot and Jonathan Asake.

Dogara, who expressed regret over the incident, noted that there was a court injunction served on the House ahead of the party’s letter.

He said: “Before even I saw the letter, there was court process served to leadership of the House. What they are alleging is very simple: whether it is in accordance with the constitution of Nigeria and the House rules that a political party has the right to choose the principal officers of the House.

“The second question is: as- suming the political party has the right, whether it is in tandem with the constitution to exclude their zone, whether that meets the re- quirement of the provision of the federal character. So apparently it is not against the transcendent of the party and as presiding officers, we don’t want to announce the position of the party.

“But there are issues of law, issues relating to court, issues re- lating to the provisions of the con- stitution. Now the precedent that we saw not too long in the House is that anytime we have such auda- cious report, we have always run away from trying to enforce that.

“Assuming we go ahead to an- nounce the party’s position, which recognise members of the north central as principal officers posi- tion and most of the members from the southwest as principal officer positions and then the north cen- tral members made a very strong allegation against APC.

“Assuming they win the case and the court now rules that that directive of the party breaches the
provision of the constitution relat- ing to the federal character, so do we now begin to see somebody vacating his officer principal posi- tion that we can accommodate the court’s ruling. So these are is- sues that really not easy to fathom or to sort. When we got this later, we have raised this issue with the party.”

In order to avoid another round of crisis, Dogara explained that the House resolved to maintain status- quo “so that we don’t get a ruling that will compel us to go back and enforce the alignment.

“We said best thing is that in order to avoid this, let’s circulate that to the zones in the House and there has never been a time in the House where a zone got more than two leadership positions and we all know the provision of the constitution which did say that all positions must be guided by the standing orders.

“But in a situation where the standing order is not explicit or is not provide for, then we provide that the use of precedent, customs, the tradition. So that therefore means even though the law does not say distribute the position to six zones, but the tradition has been that it should go to six zones in line with the constitutional provision relating to the federal character.”

According to him, “This is the bone of contention. But as leaders, we are bound by the constitution and when we got that directive from the party, we said that we must defend the constitution, we must enforce our rules and whether we have it would have harmful effect to the constitution of Nigeria for us to adopt the position of the party.

“That is where we are and that is what we are discussion. It was ongoing discussion relating to this that certain section of our members felt ‘well whatever it is let the House know, that the party is supreme’ and so that was what led to the near fracas which we witnessed in the floor of the House.

“We would make the platform through which we can ventilate the wishes and aspiration of our people. That was why I had to call on chairman ad hoc committee on media to apologise to Nigerians. I have accepted responsibility for anything that transpired and we apologise to the nation.”