Gbajabiamila rejects Dogora’s offer of constitution review chair

By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja

Report emerged at the weekend that the leadership crisis rocking the 8th House of  Representatives took a new dimension as Femi Gbajabiamila, allegedly, rejected an offer by Speaker, Yakubu  Dogara, to head the committee on constitution review.
The committee, usually an ad-hoc panel, had since the return of democracy in 1999, been under the leadership of the a sitting Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

It was reliably gathered, however, that at a peace meeting held last Friday in Abuja, the former Minority Leader of the House was offered the headship of the committee, though yet to be constituted, but that he  rejected the offer in place of the position of the Majority Leader of the House.
A source privy to this development revealed that all entreaties by the Dogara team to convince Gbajabiamila failed.

According to our source, the Constitution Review committee is the most juicy and exclusively reserved for the Deputy Speaker, who was expected to chair it for four years, and if he had accepted the offer, “the Deputy Speaker will head no committee, making his office almost empty”.
The source continued that “the House alone will vote N2billion while another N2bn from other sources will be added, bringing it (the budget for the committee) to a total of N4bn within the next four years.

“The DS as it is cannot step down for anybody, and if Gbajabiamila insists to hold onto the position of the majority leader it will lead to a serious constitutional crisis. The House leadership configuration will be tilted to one side of the country because out of the 6 positions the South West alone will have two positions which are that of DS and majority leader”.

“So the question to ask now is what will happen to other zones of the country if only SW occupies two positions out of 6 and we have 6 zones in Nigeria. Another issue is whether because of one person, the Federal Character principle will be jettisoned”, he wondered.
Gbajabiamila had led a group of lawmakers to President Muhammadu Buhari last Wednesday where he made a presentation on why the leadership crisis had

lingered on.
He explained to the President that in the sixth and seventh assemblies of the House, the North West had an extra slot in the House leadership but eyebrows were not raised against same.