Speakership Race: Abbas pleads with Adamu, NWC to call co-aspirants for agreement

By Tom Okpe

Anointed candidate of the 10th House of Representatives speakership position, Tajudeen Abbas has pleaded with Abdullahi Adamu, the party’s national chairman and members of the National Working Committee, (NWC) to call his co-aspirants to a round-table discussion for mutual agreement.

Abbas’ official adoption by the APC has met resistance by other aspirants, including Ahmed Idris-Wase, current Deputy Speaker, Muktar Betara (Borno), Yusuf Gagdi (Plateau), Sani Jaji, amongst others who viewed to slug out with the party’s choice.

The member representing Zaria Federal Constituency, accompanied by the Joint Task group while speaking during an interactive session with the APC NWC at the party’s national secretariat in Abuja on Tuesday, appealed to the party to in addition to the endorsement, encourage its lawmakers to support him.

“We will do everything humanly possible to protect the interest of our party, protect the interest of the government and Nigerians.

“I want to use this opportunity, Mr. Chairman to complete one item in your resume’, you have conqueror parliamentary, several times; you were a party man several times; you were in the executive several times; you have delivered the president-elect of our party this time around.

“What is only outstanding to complete your resume’ is to deliver the leadership of the National Assembly. I want to urge you Mr. Chairman and members of the NWC that if tomorrow you have done one leg of your job, that is the endorsement of the people that will represent the party in the next dispensation.

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“The next is to come all out, to support, encourage, to convince every member who has a vote to come and vote for your candidate come June 13.

“We want your leadership to be in the driving seat, we will cooperate, we will do everything humanly possible to make sure that we operate as one from June 13.

“I also, want to urge you as our leader, leader of all the contestants both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, we are all your children, we want to urge you to use the position God has given you and all the members of NWC to do whatever you can, to call all our co-contestants to the table, we are more than willing to sit down and agree on mutual basis what we need to move the National Assembly forward,” he said.

In his response, Adamu cautioned members of the Joint Task that in as much as they were hopefuls, they should wait for the outcome of election before addressing Abbas, speaker.

“I want to make one correction so that we will not be misrepresented. A quite number of you have referred to Abbas as speaker. Please, please he is one of the aspirants. He will become speaker on the day of proclamation.

“The laws guiding that office are very clear, he will earned that on the day of proclamation by the president and commander in chief of the 10th National Assembly. The Clerk to the National Assembly will conduct election, there is no option than the election.

“When he comes out of that election and they raised his hand and sworn in by the speaker, that nomenclature becomes most appropriate. Wait. Continue doing your good work.

“After reporting to the National Working Committee the discussions we had with the President-elect and leaders like the Vice President-elect, the Senate President, the speaker; my humble self, the National Chairman of the Party, my deputy north, south and the National Secretary of the party, I reported our deliberations. It was clear in our declaration that there is need for further and better consultations.”

Earlier, Usman Kumo, chairman, Joint Task, told the party’s leadership that the choice of Abbas and Benjamin Kalu, deputy speaker was a wise one, going by the duo’s antecedents.

“These two gentlemen are parliamentarians par excellence. They are qualified to win even without zoning. All eight political parties are represented here. From the moment the NWC took the decision, we said this is the way to go. This is a parliamentary best practice.

“Ben Kalu is our spokesman of the 9th House. For you to be the image maker, you have to have all the required qualities and temperament to handle the work. You people are talent hunters, and you have hunted well.

“Tajudeen Abbas, from 1979 to date, there is no parliamentarian in Nigeria who was privileged to sponsor 74 Bills. What we want to do now is to promote synergy between the Executive and the Legislature. Out of the 74 Bills, 21 were signed into law,” he said.