…Blame Speaker over four plenary sittings in seven months

…Executive bills determine our sitting frequency – Speaker

Lawmakers of the Ondo State House of Assembly have disclosed that only four plenary sittings have been conducted in the last seven months under the leadership of the Speaker, Olamide Oladiji.

With the revelation raising questions about the effectiveness of the state legislature in the governance of the state, the lawmakers described the development as a deliberate pattern by the Speaker.

The Assembly had been engulfed in crisis in the last few days, with the latter seeking the removal of the speaker over the purported unilateral reordering of the N9.2 billion OSOPADEC budget and mismanagement of N44 million.

One of the lawmakers, who craved anonymity, alleged that the speaker had been deploying delaying tactics whenever disagreements emerged among members.

The legislator further alleged that the Speaker’s travels abroad have compounded the problem, with the Assembly remaining inactive for weeks.

He said, “We have had only four plenary sittings since January, Speaker. We are not on recess, yet the House has hardly emerged. His issue has been going on for more than three or four months.

“Whenever he notices there are issues, he will not call plenary. He waits until the tension has died down before calling the House to sit, sometimes after a month. That has been his pattern.”

Another lawmaker, who stated that towards the end of last year, legislative activities were repeatedly disrupted, stressed that “When issues came up in November and December, we barely had meetings. Once there was a disagreement, the House effectively went quiet until members resumed much later.”

Meanwhile, the Assembly spokesperson, Olatunji Fabiyi, who is the chairman of the House Committee on Constitution and Information, stated that the responsibility for convening plenary rests solely with the speaker, while the majority leader has the statutory right to call parliamentary meetings.

“We are doing our own, you know, the system of sitting in the House. We can do parliamentary meetings; it’s part of the meetings. He is not the person that is calling for parliamentary meetings.

“The majority leader has the statutory right to call for parliamentary meetings. It is only proper sitting that the speaker conveys. And in situations when he doesn’t convey it at the parliamentary meeting, when we have our numbers, we can call for sitting,” Fabiyi stated.

The spokesperson also revealed that the leadership had met the Speaker about four days ago and told him “categorically that you are not enjoying the confidence of members again. And we told him to go and resign voluntarily so that it won’t have any negative impact on his political future.

The prolonged inactivity of the Assembly constitutes clear violation of the Nigerian Constitution, as Section 104 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) mandates that “A House of Assembly shall sit for a period of not less than one hundred and eighty-one days in a year.”

When contacted, the embattled Speaker, who described the allegations as baseless, stated that “Let them provide the evidence. Our parliamentary meeting is regarded as statutory meeting. At times, we might not have plenary sitting, but we have parliamentary sitting. Parliamentary sitting is as important as plenary sitting. All the allegations they are claiming, let them provide evidence as regards that.

“The way we work is that the executive, in most cases, are the ones that have so many bills. Maybe the bill they want to amend or maybe a new law.

“What I mean is that the executive works with the House of Assembly. They are the ones that usually sponsor so many bills. If the executive wants to come up with a bill or even sponsor a bill, most of the bills we process in the House of Assembly usually come from the executive. Either they want to amend an existing law or maybe they want to process a bill into law.”