Gbajabiamila gets boost as rival stands down for him but southeast insists it deserves speakership

HOUSE of Representatives majority leader Hon Femi Gbajabiamila has received a boost to his ambition to become the speaker after one of his fellow contestants Hon Muhammad Monguno announced that he was standing down and backing the Surulere lawmaker.

Hon Gbajabiamila, 56, who represents the Surulere 1 constituency in Lagos State is one of the favourites to become speaker after receiving the backing of the leadership of his party the All Progressives Congress (APC). However, there are several other candidates vying for the position with him and lawmakers from other geo-political zones like the southeast and north central zones are opposed to Hon Gbajabiamila's candidacy because he is also from the southwest like vice president Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

Yesterday, Hon Gbajabiamila got some support from an unexpected source when Hon Monguno representing the Marte/Monguno/Nganzai Federal Constituency of Borno State, pulled out and backed him. Hon Monguno is currently the chairman of the House Committee on Agricultural Productions and Services and has said he will support his colleague from Lagos State when the new House resumes after May 29.

Hon Monguno said: “I believe we should all rally round the party and give them the necessary support. I can’t continue with my ambition because the party has zoned the senate president’s seat to my zone.

“I’m a loyal party man and I should be the one to be calling on my colleagues to support the party on this, so I decided to drop my ambition and support Femi to emerge. If we’ll tell ourselves the truth, Femi is the most ranking among us, and he knows the job, as he has been a principal officer since 2007 and you can see that he has all it takes.

“He led the opposition as the minority leader very well during the seventh assembly and now we all can see how he has been able to bring us together as APC members in the majority party, being house leader."

However, the APC's South East Renaissance Group has called on the leadership of the party to zone the position of the speaker to the southeast geo-political zone. Chris Onyemechara, group’s convener, claimed that the APC denied the southeast principal office positions in the National Assembly in 2015 on the grounds that the zone did not have a ranking member on the platform of the party.

He regretted that now that the zone had produced two ranking members, the party’s leaders seemed to be shifting the goal post. Mr Onyemechara said a situation where the same geo-political zone that produced the vice president was scheming to produce the speaker of the House of Representatives was unacceptable.

“A situation where the same geo-political zone which produced the vice-president of the country and the national leader of our party is seen scheming and demanding, with a bloated sense of entitlement, the speakership of the House of Representatives, smacks of political avarice, brazen injustice and grave disservice to good conscience. Politics of exclusion did not yield much political dividends for our party in the southeast in the last election.

“Wisdom will advise that our party embraces politics of inclusion as the politics of exclusion did not work, why don’t we try politics of inclusion? Under the circumstance, the best way to start is to zone the speakership of the House of Representatives to the southeast.

“We therefore call on our party members from other geopolitical zones jostling for the speakership of the House of Representatives to forthwith withdraw from the race and support the southeast in the spirit of fairness, justice and equity,” Mr Onyemechara added.