The House of Representatives was on Tuesday thrown into confusion towards the end of its plenary due to the announcement of some principal officers from the minority parties in the House.
Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila had informed the House that a letter from joint leadership of the minority parties was submitted to him.
A member of PDP, Rivers, Kingsley Chinda raised a point of order citing Order 6(II) of the House rules that the leadership of the minority party is to submit the nomination of minority principal officers.
According to Chinda, our practice has never been collating of signature of members to appoint the officers. I’ll plead that the Speaker suspends the letter.
The Speaker in his explanation, cited Rule 14 of the House which entails eligibility of any members that want to be principal officers.
He said the nomination of the Minority principal officers does not belong to only the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) but other parties of the House.
To this end, he ruled Chinda out of order. And while attempting to announce these minority principal officers from the letter with him, some members stylishly approached the mace to snatch it and other members of the House in support of the Speaker prevented the move and supported that the nomination be read and endorsed.
On the letter read by Speaker Gbajabiamila, Hon. Ndudi Elumelu (PDP, Delta) was nominated as the Minority Leader, Tobi Okechukwu as Deputy Minority Leader.
Others are Hon. Gwani Gideon as Minority Whip and Hon. Adekoya Segun as Deputy Minority Whip.
