By Samuelson Ikenna Onuoha
The Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, Rt Hon Chike Olemgbe, has moved against some members of the House who are plotting to impeach him.
To this end, four members of the House who were identified as the arrow heads of the plot have been suspended with immediate effect.
They are :
- Hon Samuel Chidiebere Ogbunikpa, Representing Okigwe State Constituency.
- Hon Dominic Ezerioha, Representing Oru-west State Constituency.
- Hon Samuel Nkem Otuibe, Representing Ahiazu Mbaise State Constituency.
- Hon Henry Agabasonu, Representing Ezinihitte Mbaise State Constituency.
For some time now, the House of Assembly has been restive and the atmosphere somewhat tensed as some Members have been fanning the embers of discord to achieve their own purely selfish ends.
This has heightened tensions and was threatening to affect the smooth relationship between the Legislature and the Executive, and by extension, destabilising the peace in the State. A situation which the State is not ready for at this time.
The situation came to a head at a Training Workshop, which all the Members attended in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, last week.
On the very first day, the course, the Institute of Advanced Legal and Democratic Studies which was the venue for the workshop was reduced to a battlefield as legislators who were opposed to the Speaker and the Leadership of the House could no longer restrain themselves. They left what the course they were attending and resorted to openly casting aspersions on the Speaker.
It was alleged that this was a discreet plan by them to openly discredit the Speaker, so as to give rise to his planned impeachment.
Tempers and voices rose as those legislators in support of the Speaker could no longer take it and decided to challenge those insulting the Speaker. A shouting match ensued. The commotion caused a huge disturbance in the Institute and attracted Senior Members of Staff of the Institute who came in to mediate and calm the battling Members.
The Staff disclosed that they had held several of such courses for legislators from various parts of the country over the years, but that they had never witnessed the sort of drama where Members would publicly denigrate their Speaker and House Leadership and so were shocked by the action of Imo state House of Assembly Members.
Indeed, it was a show of shame. Obviously, the fight the impeachment plotters instigated in Abuja was part of a larger plot and did not just happen for nothing. There had been clandestine plots to cause havoc in the House
The very next day after the incident at the Institute, two Owerri based Newspapers carried identical reports about a plot to impeach the Speaker.
In the reports, an unnamed legislator levelled several grave allegations against the Speaker. He said the Speaker was “inept” and ” incompetent”. He also cast aspersions on his integrity and questioned his academic qualifications.
The unnamed legislator accused the Speaker of reducing the House of Assembly members to” mere chorus boys” and ” rubber stamps”. According to him, “if urgent steps were not taken to impeach the Speaker, they would spend their entire tenure chasing shadows without anything tangible to show for the four year mandate they hold for the people”. He said that the Speaker had made the House an “inactive appendage” of the Executive, to the extent that they cannot question Executive Bills brought before it.
He pointed out that “with what is happening, if the Speaker remains in office most of us will become poorer than we were, before we were elected”.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the disgruntled legislators who are opposed to the Speaker are motivated by purely selfish reasons. They are unhappy that the Speaker is not allowing them to extort or make money from the Executive before Executive Bills are passed. So, for that reason, he must go.
It is also clear that some ranking members of the House of Assembly from the Speaker’s Okigwe Senatorial zone, to which the Speakership has been zoned, are behind the plot. They want to unseat him to pave the way for them to become Speaker. That is why they are throwing up these spurious allegations in a desperate bid to win the support of their colleagues in their move to impeach the Speaker.
Legislators, or Members of the House, must not be allowed to disrupt the functioning of the House because of excessive greed and ambition.
That is why Members of the Imo State House of Assembly voted to suspend, indefinitely, those who have been identified as the prime movers of the plot to impeach the Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly.
Citizen Ikenna Samuelson Iwuoha
