NNPP member-elect says JTT will choose principal officers of House of Representatives

Aliyu Madaki, Member-Elect of the House of Representatives (HoR) in Nigeria, said that members of the Joint Task Team (JTT) of the federal legislative house would choose the principal officers of the incoming 10th assembly.

Madaki, who is coming into the house as a member of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP), said that a coalition of member-elects cut across several political parties is going to choose their principal officers instead of the unwritten rule of the party, with the majority making that decision for all members of the legislative house.

“What we expect from the ruling party is to provide leadership,” Madaki said when answering questions about party politics as it pertains to the leadership of the House of Representatives on Channels Television Politics Today on Wednesday.

Read also: APC dissolves campaign council ahead May 29 inauguration

“If you look at the composition of the House of Representatives, you don’t stop at the composition of the Senate. In the House of Representatives, if you bring all the opposition parties together, our number is higher than the All Progressive Party (APC); that means that the ruling party will have to sit up and work very well.

“What we want to do is follow best practises all over the world. The party that has the majority produces the speaker,” he said, agreeing with the popular saying that the party with the majority decides who gets presiding officers’ positions.

Even though he has been away from legislative business, he insisted that the opposition parties can have a greater influence despite the standing verbal rule that gives the party with the majority a higher power in determining these positions of influence.

“If you are taking it party by party, actually it is APC, and that is why we have a team that we call the joint task team, which comprises all the political parties put together—APC, PDP, LP, NNPP, SDP, all the parties—there is a coalition,” he added.

On the number of legislators in the House of Representatives who are members of the coalition, he said, “There are 285 who are members of the coalition.”

He went on further to add that once the ruling party agrees on which zone should produce, for example, the speaker, then they can, as a coalition, agree on who should become the speaker.