The House of Representatives has officially responded to the weekend’s call by its opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) caucus that electorates should compel their representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Muhammadu Buhari over multiple failures in governance.
The House through its spokesman, Hon. Benjamin Kalu, on Monday described the impeachment call as leader of the Caucus, Hon. Kingsley Chinda’s “loan voyage”, noting that the opinion of a single member of the opposition party in the house has been misinterpreted by media reports as the voice of the entire House of Representatives.
The lawmaker insisted that the opinion “does not represent the weakest opinion of the minority-caucus of the 9th House”, adding that “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 recognized 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, destabilizing 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.
“The motive behind this 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, a task many thought was not possible seeing that in the history of our Modern democracy none of the past presidents obliged the parliamentary request for an interactive session and none of the past leaderships of the assembly was able to use parliamentary back channel diplomacy, adopted and applied by the current leadership to secure the acceptance of Mr. President to this invitation; an outing that has strengthened our democratic principles.
“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. Unfortunately, this call is not only illogical, it appears as a tool mischievously 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.
“In the view of the 9th Assembly, it would remain a call 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,” Kalu said in a statement on Monday.
He said it appeared obvious that shocked by the acceptance by President Buhari to honour the House’s invitation, “he (Chinda) is on a new lonely voyage of personal agenda, strange to the legislative agenda of the House and leadership”.
