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NASS: Oshiomhole insists APC will not share committees with the opposition

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Edo Police CP insists Oshiomhole was not attacked in the state

The National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole has re-echoed his earlier stand that the ruling party will not share committees in the National Assembly with the opposition.

Oshiomhole stated during his remarks at a dinner hosted by President Muhammadu Buhari for House of Representatives members-elect at the Old Banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja on Tuesday.
According to the former Edo State governor, the APC has about 223 members-elect out of the 360 House members, adding that 67 were re-elected for the ninth assembly.

Insisting that there was no room for coalition with the opposition, Oshiomhole said the APC has two-third to carryout any legislative business including amendment of the constitution.
He said: “Mr President on your behalf we have had a meeting, the NWC with the new members of the House of Representative elect who are yet to be sworn in and later they were joined by the re-elected members. And so we had an APC caucus of the House of Representatives which was held some weeks ago at Yardua center.

“Your excellency, I found that meeting very revealing just listening to the quality of intervention made by new members yet to be inaugurated.

“I am convinced sir, Nigerians have made a very wise choice in electing the members in the House of Representatives. They demonstrated deep knowledge of the challenges that we face. They acknowledged the need to work together as a party.

“I think they recognise that Nigerians realise that we have gone through some avoidable difficulties in managing your first term because we have what I can easily describe as a hostile leadership of the National Assembly and there is no better evidence to this than the fact that people elected on the platform of our party even in the face of pronouncements of the supreme Court that it is parties that win elections not candidates.

“They were elected on the basis of our platform, they were beneficiaries of the party and when it suits them they decamped and turned us to a minority and created tension in the system, refuse to approve or even consider nominees from His excellency for various positions, delayed budget needlessly in order to make implementation difficult and created all sorts of obstacles that you will think that the National Assembly was dominated by members of the opposition yet they were APC members.

“For me sir, what I have found in life there is nothing wrong once you admit that you are human, mistakes are expected but it can only become a problem if we repeat mistakes twice.

“From the lessons we have learnt from what happened in 2015, we are determined that in 2019 we’d not repeat those mistakes. We draw the apropriate lessons from those mistakes and we move on. If you are elected, it means you are tested and trusted.

“Out of 223 APC elected members, about 67 were re-elected, the rest are new members.

“In other climes, you don’t go into coalition when you are in the majority, you do so when you don’t have the numbers. We have the numbers, out of 306, Nigerians elected 223 APC members because they don’t want Mr. president to face the trauma of 2015.

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“Most of those who decamped were rejected and even those who led it were uprooted. We cannot as a party which has a comfortable majority, entrust critical committees in the hands of the PDP or opposition.

“If Nigerians wanted them, they could have voted them. In the days of PDP, every committee were chaired by PDP members.

Continuing, Oshiomhole described the present leadership of the National Assembly as selfish and greedy.
“We do not need to do business with the devil for us to survive in the ninth Assembly.

“In African family, we sit down in a closed door to address issues, the good news is that there is a role for everyone.

“Neither Mr President nor the party expects the National Assembly to be rubber stamps, we don’t have rubbers…But we will not fight in Wuse market.

“Both the re-elected and new members are entitled to heading committees

“We have asked our people not to share what belongs to us with other party members.

“I don’t have apologies against forces of retrogression”, Oshiomhole said.

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