Who Emerges the Next Speaker?
The speakership of the House of Representatives in the new regime is evidently between Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila and Hon. Yakubu Dogara, writes Muhammad Bello
The road leading to the emergence of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is usually rough. Since the advent of democracy in 1999, modern day history has shown that the green chamber is the battleground between the two arms of the Nigerian legislature – the Senate and the House.
The diverse views from the House is arguably because it has more numerical strength than the Senate, giving credence to the saying that the higher the number of members, the fiercer the debate. Every sitting Nigerian President from President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Goodluck Jonathan have made effort to influence the configuration of the House leadership.
However, image of the House has been tainted in the past by one scandal or the other. But the outgoing Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal’s leadership has been able to restore a modicum of dignity to the House, hence the need to carefully select a Speaker capable of surpassing the Tambuwal success story.
The major CHANGE many Nigerians would be expecting from any APC Speaker is a cut in the size of salary and allowances of lawmakers, robust oversight of government agencies, re-engineering of the annual appropriation law and the passage of citizen-oriented Bills and Motions.
On June 2, 2015, the position of Speaker and Deputy Speaker would go to any ranking member of the House with the capacity to muster a simple majority vote as required by the constitution. While positions of the Majority Leader, Deputy Majority Leader, Majority Whip, Deputy Majority Whip would be reserved for the party with majority of members in the House, while the minority party holds on to the positions of Minority Leader, Deputy Minority Leader, Minority Whip and Deputy Minority Whip. Such arrangement makes leadership of the House all encompassing.
The South-east and South-south, having eased themselves out of the new political equation in the House are now left with the hope of clinching positions of Minority Leader, Minority Whip, Deputy Minority Leader, Deputy Minority Whip, and other unelectable top positions in the new federal cabinet, at least for a Buhari government to be seen as truly national. The contest for the electable position of Speaker is likely to be a straight contest between APC members from South-west and the Northeast geo-political zones. Already the President-Elect, General Muhammadu Buhari is from North West, Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (SAN) hails from South-west, giving the possible emergence of a Northerner from either North Central or North East as the Senate President. Presumably, the Speakership would find its way back to the South-west.
Investigations by THISDAY however showed that the two leading contestants for the number four seat in the country are the current leader of APC Caucus in the House, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila and incumbent Chairman, Committee on House services, Hon. Yakubu Dogara. While Gbajabiamila is from Lagos, Dogara hails from Bauchi.
Some Nigerians are of the view that, the “same party that ridiculed PDP’s zoning arrangement for Tambuwal to emerge in 2011 must not be seen to have sacrificed merit on the altar of zoning.”
Going by Section 50 (1) (B) of the 1999 constitution, “there shall be a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, who shall be elected by the members of that House from among themselves”.
The implication of this section is that even a ranking PDP member of the House can by law contest for office of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker despite an APC majority in the House, if such member has the war chest and support of simple majority members of the House.
During the Second Republic, Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and was an opposition member of the now defunct Nigeria’s Peoples Party (NPP). He emerged as a result of an accord between the NPP and the then ruling party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
Femi Gbajabiamila is a lawyer, trained both in Nigeria and the U.S. As a Juris Doctorate in Law, he was first elected into the House in 2003 on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD). Gbajabiamila is well-respected by his colleagues and many Nigerians for championing debates that are difficult to ignore on the floor of the House.
Gbajabiamila ensured that the opposition had its way in the House under a hitherto PDP-dominated House. Gbajabiamila is also a member of the APC Board of Trustees, NEC, National Caucus and Presidential Campaign Council.
Dogara, on his part, is a fine legislator with a sound legal background. A former special assistant to a Minister of State for Transportation, he became a lawmaker in 2007 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He is one of the 37 PDP lawmakers that defected to APC last year. Ever since his defection, Dogara has been a rallying point for APC in Bauchi State.
Either of Gbajabiamila or Dogara would need the support of all members across party lines to clinch the exalted seat of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile the outgoing Speaker, Tambuwal still commands influence in the House and would be expected to throw his weight behind Gbajabiamila for his prominent role in prevailing on leaders of the defunct ACN to support him as Speaker instead of Hon. Mulikat Akande Adeola.
Till date, APC leaders are still under bashing for denying the South-west the speakership slot. Gbajabiamila also stood up for Tambuwal and ensured that all attempts to impeach him failed.
In advanced democracy, especially America whose presidential system Nigeria is modeled after, whenever an opposition party becomes a majority party in parliament, the Minority Leader, base on his performance, automatically becomes the Speaker.
In 2006, Nancy Pelosi was U.S House Minority Leader. But following a Democrat Majority in the mid-term elections, Nancy Pelosi was automatically elevated by her party caucus to position of the Speaker while the general Speakership election merely became a formality.
Thus, the speakership should have been a walk over for the incumbent Minority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila, being the most ranking APC member and his track record of excellence but since every politics is local, many Nigerians would be waiting to see how the APC as a party would have its way and still respect the independence of the legislature.