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Review… Maybe it’s time for Gbajabiamila to accept defeat

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By Stan Azuakola . . .
Since July 28, 2015, the name plate on Femi Gbajabiamila’s door at his national assembly office has borne the title: Majority Leader. Two months earlier, he had competed to occupy the speaker’s office but watched helplessly as his bid flopped on the floor of the green chamber.
Before June 6, Gbajabiamila was the minority leader of the House of Representatives for four unbroken years under the ACN/APC. He was the more popular and articulate minority leader in the National Assembly. His senate counterpart, George Akume, did not quite have his brilliance, oratory or work ethics. Gbajabiamila was the one who led the fight of the opposition in the National Assembly – the photo of him jumping over the assembly gate that fateful day in 2014 when it seemed like former Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal was going to be impeached, remains one of the enduring images of that saga.
It seems however that despite having switched from minority to majority leader, Gbajabiamila still fancies himself as the opposition man. He is finding it difficult to shed the toga of the underdog who does everything possible to land a blow on his bigger adversary.
When that adversary was the PDP, it made sense; but now, the adversary is Yakubu Dogara, the speaker of the House of Representatives who is a member of Gbajabiamila’s party. So things are a bit more complicated.
The thing about Gbajabiamila’s fight with Dogara is that the House leader is clearly losing and his camp is depleting daily. When he contested for speaker against Dogara, he lost by only eight votes: 182 to 174.
Monday, when he boycotted the inauguration of the special and standing committees of the House of Representatives, less than 50 lawmakers were with him.
The group which Gbajabiamila is leading has a right to feel shortchanged. They must be the most marginalised ruling party in history. Speaker Yakubu Dogara showed disloyalty to his party when he shared committee chairmanship positions and gave 48 slots to the APC and 46 to the PDP. The action of the speaker is anti-party; it is hard to look at it any other way.
Nigerians voted for the APC. The lawmakers on the APC platform are the ones who shared the vision that was accepted by a majority of Nigerians, so it makes no sense that the chairmanship of committees through which the impact of their visions should be felt is given to members of the opposition.
Imagine this: Opposition PDP lawmakers were given chairmanship of committees like Petroleum, Power, Environment, Works, Gas, Foreign Affairs, Banking, Information Technology, Aviation, National Planning, Nigerian Ports and Waterways. Giving those positions to the opposition the way Dogara did is ridiculous. It does not help further the agenda of the ruling party, it endangers it.
In addition, the Speaker chose not to consult with Gbajabiamila before making his picks. Even though the House rules give the speaker the right to make the ultimate decision, the laws require that he consults with the principal officers. Dogara did not.
Still, Gbajabiamila ought to know by now when a battle has been lost. Dogara is speaker and Gbajabiamila has to get used to that fact and accept it. He has to try to see how they can work together, but boycotting the inauguration and releasing a combative press statement afterwards is definitely not the way to go.

Read also: Dogara is a fifth columnist – Gbajabiamila group

“It is absolutely clear that Hon. Yakubu Dogara is, but a fifth columnist, an agent provocateur committed to destabilizing the house on behalf of the powerful forces that have ruined Nigeria and brought us to the current sorry past,” said Hon. Musa Garba-Adar (Sokoto state) in a statement he signed on behalf of the Gbajabiamila group after a meeting with APC executives at the party headquarters in Abuja. Gbajabiamila was not in the meeting however.
For sure the Gbajabiamila group made some great points, and if Speaker Dogara had any loyal bone in him, he should read their words and take it to heart that he betrayed his party.
In their statement, the Gbajabiamila group described Dogara’s action as “a declaration of war against the APC and the Presidency – all calculated at sabotaging the majority advantage that APC enjoys, with ultimate aim of rolling back the electoral victory of our party.”
They want the speaker to reverse the composition of the headships of the committees. Now, there’s almost no chance that Dogara is going to heed their call. He clearly still feels that he owes his ascension to the speaker’s chair to the votes by PDP lawmakers and also feels that his interest is best protected by them.
For now, he will continue to keep them happy. Gbajabiamila and his group can decide to keep fighting and keep losing both the support of more of their members, as well as that of Nigerians who just want the elected lawmakers to get to work. Instead of fighting however, they could count their losses, go back and try to work with the rest of their colleagues. And then wait for the banana peels.

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