By Sam Kayode in Jos
The embattled speaker of Plateau State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Nuhu Ayuba, and 15 other members of the Assembly Thursday reconvened with a mace outside the legislature’s premises and impeached the newly-elected speaker, Sanda. They also suspended other members of the new speaker’s group.
They resolved in that sitting to suspend all the members involved in the dastardly act this morning.
The following is a fallout of their proceeding today in Jos…
Plateau House of Assembly, Federal Republic of Nigeria
4th Republic
9th Assembly
3rd Session
During the Plenary of 9th Assembly on 28.10.2021, by 2pm
Motion made and Question proposed: That Hon. Philip Dasun do now move his motion for suspension of Honourble Members that breached the procedures of the House.
Question put and agreed to
Resolved in the affirmative
The six Honourble Members suspended will face Committee on Judiciary, Ethics and Privileges. They are
1. Hon. Naanlong Daniel Gapyil from Mikang Constituency.
2. Hon. Yakubu Sanda from Pengana Constituency.
3. Rt. Hon. Saleh Shehu Yipmwang from Dengi Constituency
4. Rt. Hon. Baba Hassan Ibrahim from Jos North North Constituency
5. Hon. Eric Dakogol from Quanpan North
6. Hon. Abubakar Mohammed Ballo Quanpan South
The House passed another vote of confidence on Rt. Hon. Abok Nuhu Ayuba the Speaker of Plateau State House of Assembly
After the plenary, the House addressed the press. Link of press conference will be shared in due time.
Meanwhile, the Plateau State youths of the People’s Democratic Party PDP have vowed to fight back until Speaker Nuhu Ayuba of the House of Assembly is restored.
Speaking on behalf of the youths, Nantip Padur said that it was gross illegality to allow only seven members of the Assembly to barge into the building and impeach the speaker.
He said the minimum requirement for the impeachment was 16 members but they were less than 50 percent of that yet they came by 6am with top class security to impeach speaker Ayuba of the All Progressive Congress APC
The youths carrying placards outside the House of Assembly vowed that if the Governor went ahead to recognize the illegality they will mobilize their people in the House to sit in a parallel House somewhere outside the barricaded complex.
“As far as we are concerned, Abok is still the Speaker. We see no reason why the executive hates the young man so much. He is not in their good books because he called on them to correct the spates of attacks in the state.
“Abok to the people of the state is still the speaker. If they go ahead to discredit him further we will create a parallel house and go to court to enforce our rights” he said
Trouble started for Nuhu Ayuba when resolutions were reached that Governor Simon Lalong himself a former speaker of the house should hurry up and address the incessant killings of civilians by bandits on the Plateau.
“The Governor was said to have been irked by the development and vowed to get back at the speaker for daring him publicly.
“He then gave the speaker three hours to resign which he refused and what you saw playing out this Thursday morning was the revenge spleen of the Governor finally unleashed on members leaving one member Philip Dasun badly bruised in his own blood.” Said another protester comrade Joel Jelomi also carrying a protesting placard.
“I believe this is high level impunity and illegality. Seven out of 24 people cannot be allowed to impeach the speaker of 24 members. This man claims to be the chair of Governors in the north. How will he intervene when another northern state has this kind of crisis?
“I don’t see any error in the the statement of the speaker when he asked the Governor to explain to the people about the incessant attack of Yelwa Zangam, in the northern senatorial zone of plateau.
“What they did was babaric and a clear betrayal of the trust of the people and we will surely fight back and get justice.
Joel who is the chair of the Plateau peace progressive movement said that the allegations against the speaker were spurious and cannot be substantiated.
“They actually went to another state to copy the petition they claimed to have leveled against the speaker to the EFCC. You can see they mistakenly left Lagos inside the petition meant for EFCC plateau.
“And by the way, why not wait for EFCC to land on the man and arrest him before you start blabbing about what you don’t have evidence about?” Said Joel
This newspaper learnt from Assembly sources that the executive started probing the young speaker as soon as he started chairing the churning of terse resolutions for the executive to wake up and take up the gauntlet of the security of the state more seriously.
But this did not go down well with the government house which felt that they were misusing their new found financial autonomy to assert their powers.
“So if the young man is not stopped, he may one day call for the impeachment of the very Governor which is why they had to strike him in such a crude and shameful way” said another assembly source who preferred anonymity.
Legal Reactions
Veteran lawyer and activist in Jos Barrister Lawrence Onyia told metrowatch on phone that without seeing the evidence paraded by those who did the impeachment, it was difficult to say if it was illegal or not.
He however agreed that for impeachment to be actionable, a two thirds majority must be achieved before any impeachment can take place under the Constitution.
“The process can however be challenged if the aggrieved parties ask for accelerated hearing from a competent court of law.
“It will however be a long process for them to achieve justice considering the fact that the courts may go on recess on the 15th of December. The speaker however has a major role to play in the restoration of his mandate.
Both judiciary and legislature have been given autonomy in the state so it’s up to the agrieved to file their cases.
Meanwhile security personnel have cordoned the John Mark Samchi way leading to the Assembly when metrowatch visited.
