War in the house of Change....APC's Letter on House principal officers unconstitutional

Speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has said that the All Progressives Congress, APC, letter to the House leadership containing names of those to occupy the principal officers position was against the constitution of Nigeria.

The Speaker stated this at the weekend when he received a delegation of past members led by Rep. Dauda Bundot and Rep. Jonathan Asake. The House was thrown into pandemonium on Thursday which led to fisticuffs following the alleged Speaker’s refusal to read the letter from the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Oyegun which contained names to fill the positions.

Addressing his visitors, the Speaker said: “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. “It would have harmful effects to the constitution of Nigeria for us to adopt the position of the party.

“Assuming we go ahead to announce the party’s position, which recognises members of the Northeast and Southwest as principal officers which the Northcentral members have already made a very strong allegation against APC, what happens?

“Assuming a court now rules that, the directive of the party breaches the provisions of the constitution relating to federal character, do we now begin to see somebody vacating his official principal position so that we can accommodate the court’s ruling?” The Speaker further said that in order to avoid such problems it would be best that the offices of the presiding officers were given to other zones that had not produced any principal officers.