PDP forces Mulikat on Reps as House Leader

Details: Category: Politics; Published on Wednesday, 06 July 2011 05:30; Written by Admin; Hits: 1086

The month-long tussle over the appointment of principal officers for the House of Representatives ended yesterday when the Presidency and the Peoples Democratic Party’s [PDP] national working committee succeeded in securing the post of House Leader for Mrs. Mulikat Adeola-Akande, their anointed candidate who lost the speakership to Aminu Waziri Tambuwal last month.

mulikat adeola-akande The Tambuwal-led House leadership yielded to the party bosses at a marathon meeting at the State House in Abuja at which President Goodluck Jonathan and acting party chairman Dr. Bello Haliru Mohamed were present. The position of House Leader, which was hotly claimed by the South South, North East and South West caucuses, was allocated to the latter on the insistence of the party leaders and Mrs Adeola-Akande was immediately tipped to occupy the post.

Present at yesterday’s meeting, apart from Jonathan and Mohamed, were Speaker Aminu Tambuwal and his deputy Emeka Ihedioha, as well as other ranking members of the House.

The House had been locked in crisis since June 6, 2011, when its members overwhelmingly defied the PDP’s zoning formula, which allocated the speakership to the South West, and elected Tambuwal and Ihedioha, from the North West and South East zones respectively, as speaker and deputy speaker.

Under the party’s zoning formula, the North East zone was to produce the deputy speaker.

Under the new arrangement, the North-east which had insisted on getting the House Leader was allocated the Chief Whip which is the fourth in hierarchy in the House, while the South-south which was to produce the House Leader under the House Project, the group that produced Tambuwal as Speaker, was given the deputy leader’s post. North-Central is now to get the deputy whip, and the position has been allocated to Niger State.

Daily Trust gathered that although the party leadership seems to favour the appointment of Rep Isiaka Bawa from Taraba State as the Chief Whip, majority of members prefer Rep Yakubu Dogara from Bauchi State for the position. Dogara was to have contested as deputy speaker on the same platform as Mulikat, but he backed out of the race after Mulikat’s overwhelming defeat.

Daily Trust learnt that a meeting of the party’s national leadership and the House leadership was to be held last night to finally ratify the accord and sort out who occupies the Chief Whip’s position between Dogara and Bawa. It was to also determine who among four top contenders from the South South will be the deputy leader. Reps John Enoh (PDP, Cross Rivers), Ndudi Elumelu (PDP, Delta), Leo Ogor (PDP, Edo) and Friday Itulah (PDP, Edo) were all in the race for the House Leader, before yesterday’s settlement.

On the opposition side, the Action Congress of Nigeria [ACN] which is the second largest party in the House has endorsed Rep Femi Gbajiamila from Lagos State as the Minority Leader, while the Minority Whip which initially was given to the Congress for Progressive Change [CPC] was later taken away by the ACN caucus.

The situation did not go down well with the CPC members, who said they will not accept the position of deputy minority whip because they are the third largest party in the House.

The All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) was allocated the post of deputy minority leader and Rep Suleiman Abdurrahman Sumaila from Kano State has been penciled down for the post. However, with the protest from the CPC, it is likely that the ANPP MPs may have to make do with the deputy minority whip while the CPC may get the deputy minority leader.

The new House principal officers, according to a ranking member who spoke off record because he was not authorised to speak, will be announced on the House floor tomorrow or, failing that, next Tuesday. (Daily Trust)