By Friday Idachaba
KOGI State House of Assembly has described the three suspended members of the Assembly as black legs whose stock in trade was to cause disharmony between the Executive and Legislative arms of government and amongst members of the House.
The House position followed the deliberation on the discovery that the suspended lawmakers forged members’ signatures in what the House described as evil machinations to impeach the Speaker.
Recall that three lawmakers, Hon. Ahmed Ahmed former Deputy Speaker, Hon. Abdullahi Bello, former Majority Leader and Hon. Moses Ododo, former Chief Whip, who were last week impeached and suspended, released a statement shortly after their impeachment.
In the statement, they claimed to have purportedly carried out an impeachment of the Speaker, Rt. Hon. (Prince) Matthew Kolawole by a notice signed by eighteen members.
Consequently, the House at its plenary on Tuesday ordered its Ethics and Privileges committee to commence investigation into the alleged forgery as members whose signatures were found in the documents have denied ever signing any impeachment notice against the Speaker.
All the members who spoke on the issue maintained that they, at no time, signed any impeachment notice, saying the signatures attached to the purported impeachment notice were signatures signed by members in May this year endorsing the Presidential Aspiration of Gov. Yahaya Bello.
They accused the former Deputy Speaker of betrayal of trust, pointing out that the signatures collected to serve as attachment to the communique endorsing Governor Yahaya Bello’s Presidential ambition was maliciously used by him to further his inordinate ambition of removing the speaker
Members maintained that though, the members in question are already on suspension, the issue should be thoroughly investigated and appropriate punishment meted on them to serve as deterrent.
The House members described the actions of the former Principal Officers as shameful, reprehensible and demanded unreserved apologies from them.
Ruling on the matter, the Speaker, Prince Mathew Kolawole described the action of the three suspended members as a gross violation of the house rules and privileges.
He directed the Chairman Ethics and privileges to do a diligent investigation on the matter by giving the accused members fair hearing and report back to the house.
No time frame for the submission of the report was given.
