Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole on Tuesday described the current political crisis rocking the state as the handiwork of “elements” who had defected from the All Progressives Congress to the Peoples Democratic Party. Oshiomhole said this during a town hall meeting organised by the state government at Imagwe College in Benin, the Edo State capital. Present at the meeting were members of the state executive council, state House of Assembly members, traditional and religious leaders, market women, civil society groups, labour unions and youths. The governor said that both the PDP and APC had co-existed peacefully prior to the defection of some members of the APC, including some members of the Edo State House of Assembly, to the PDP. He said that four of the lawmakers, Messrs Festus Ebea (Esan South-East), Friday Ogieriakhi (Orhiomwon-South), Patrick Osayimwen (Oredo-East) and Jude Ise-Idehen (Ikpoba Okha) were suspended for misconduct, in accordance with the extant rules of the Edo State House of Assembly. The governor described as unfortunate the “grossly unhelpful recalcitrance” of some of the state lawmakers whom he said refused to obey court orders, even when some of the injunctions granted in their favour were obeyed by the leadership of the House. He lamented that the leadership of the PDP chose to deepen the disagreement among the state lawmakers so as to create maximum distractions, even when the suspension of some lawmakers should have been strictly considered as an internal affair of the state House of Assembly. He also recalled that three of the suspended lawmakers, Friday Ogieriakhi, Patrick Osayimwen and Jude Ise-Idehen, had approached the Federal High Court, sitting in Benin City, and obtained an interim order to restrain the Speaker of the House, Uyi Igbe, from declaring their seats vacant, in line with Section 109 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, having decamped from the APC to the PDP and from suspending them following alleged misconduct on disciplinary grounds.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 16:38:08 +0000
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