Gbajabiamila under attack over threat to report service chiefs to Buhari

Following a threat to report service chiefs to President Muhammadu Buhari over their failure to honour meeting with lawmakers, a northern group, Arewa Citizens for Democracy (ACD) has attacked the Speaker of the House of Representative, Femi Gbajabiamila.

Gbajabiamila had on Wednesday threatened to report the service chiefs to the president upon their failure to honour a security meeting.

Reacting, however, the Arewa Citizens for Democracy (ACD) said the fact that Gbajabiamila could only threaten to report the service chiefs to President Buhari is an admission of his screaming incompetence.

While speaking at a press conference in Kaduna on Sunday, the president of the group, AbdulGafar Usman, said “He (Gbajabiamila) is aware that he does not possess the powers he attempted to exercise over the military”.

Usman said instead of making trouble for the military or anyone within the security architecture, the Speaker with the other members of the House should come up with innovative ways of providing a budget that makes it possible for the military to get the equipment needed to fight terrorists. He said, among others,

“We express our disappointment with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Honourable Femi Gbajabiamila, who threw all the honour accruable to his person and position away to cast aspersions on the office and persons of our great nation’s security chiefs.

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The Speaker, under the guise of ventilating his anger over the non-appearance of the military chief before the House threatened to report them to President Muhammadu Buhari.

He also went ahead to castigate them not minding that these are men that have given more to Nigeria in the past five years than the Speaker can give in five lifetimes even if he lives to be a thousand years in each life.

Arewa Citizens for Democracy (ACD) is of the view that rather than throwing decorum to the dogs and embark on the ranting show he put on for the entire world, the speaker should have search deep within himself and his institution, the National Assembly, to understand why the Military chiefs did not show up even when invited.

We make this point without prejudice to the reasons that kept the security bosses away, especially when they made it their duty to delegate worthy and competent representatives to appear before the lawmakers. We shall call the attention of the Speaker to a few some realities that he may be deliberately ignoring but which right-thinking Nigerians are aware of.

We all know that there is not much that happens when the House of Representatives invites public office holders and heads of agencies to appear before them. It is often nothing but an extortion racket, something they use to blackmail the invited persons to pay bribes to lawmakers from the budget of their organizations. It is on record that even when the public officers in question do appear before the House or its committees, it is often the subordinate officers with jurisdiction for the areas of interest that eventually answer all the question being posed.

The office holder is only compelled to put in an appearance to make sure he is on the ground to negotiate the bribes to be paid. For a country that is battling a terrorist insurgency Gbajabiamila should have known better than trying to coax money out of the military chiefs.

The fact that Gbajabiamila could only threaten to report the service chiefs to President Buhari is an admission of his screaming impotence. He is aware that he does not possess the powers he attempted to exercise over the military.”

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