Delta House of crises

Emmanuel UduaghanIn this report, Alphonsus Agborh and Sylvester Idowu chronicle the events that led to the recent crises in the Delta State House of Assembly in Asaba and the underlying factors in the furore.

“I never knew I would be speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly when I was coming to work today (April 22 this year) …There will not be rancour anymore in this House.”

These were the words of the new and seventh speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly since 1999, Honourable Martins Okonta, when he appreciated the lawmakers in a short speech after being sworn in. His oath-taking climaxed the intrigues that had trailed moves to remove the former speaker, Honourable Olise Imegwu, a three-term legislator representing Ndokwa East Constituency.

Honourable Okonta, a lawyer and former radio operator with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), could be regarded as lucky in the sense that the circumstances which pushed him to the number three seat of the state was shrouded in mystery, probably because he was not expecting it.

There seems to be no end to the crisis now rocking Delta State House of Assembly. The lawmakers, 29 in all, have been having the roughest time of their legislative period in the hallowed chamber of the Assembly. The crisis has to do with the soul of the Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan-led government in the state.

This is not the first time the House would be in crisis. In October last year, the lawmakers engaged one another over an aborted foreign trip for refresher course on parliamentary proceedings in the United States of America. The journey was not the problem but the huge amount of money committed to the trip by the state government. Most of the legislators that made the trip to Mississippi University then discovered to their chagrin that there was no arrangement made for them and were turned back by the authorities of the institution.

Based on the embarrassment faced in the foreign land due to no fault of theirs, the legislators returned to vent their anger on the principal officers of the House that organised the trip, accusing them of pocketing the money meant for the course. It took the intervention of Governor Uduaghan to save the situation and return normalcy to the state Assembly.

Barely a week after, another crisis erupted. This time, it was as a result of another trip hurriedly organised by the leadership of the House for wives of its principal officers in South Africa. They were slated to study etiquettes associated with wives of parliamentarians. However, because the course was scheduled for the wives of a few of the members of the House, the spouses of other lawmakers prompted their husbands to reject the move. They even called for the removal of the principal officers.

Governor Uduaghan again intervened in the crisis before it became unmanageable like the aborted trip to United States by the lawmakers. The House has since been operating with the anticipation of another crisis. The fragile peace in the House snapped again with the approaching date for judgment in the pending suit before the election petition tribunal in which the Action Congress (AC) governorship candidate in the 2007 election in Delta State, Mr. Peter Okocha, is challenging the victory of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Governor Uduaghan on the ground that he (Okocha) was illegally excluded from contesting in that election.

The leadership of the PDP in the state was, however, not taking chances. Top members of the party and their political strategists went to the drawing board to prepare for the impending judgment. Part of the strategy, according to a source close the Government House in Asaba, is to look for a reliable, trusted and dependable member of the House of Assembly that would hold forth as acting governor of the state in case the judgment is not favourable to PDP. The acting governor would be expected to prepare the ground for the return of Dr. Uduaghan. PDP was said to have perfected this strategy because it worked in Kogi State and some other states.

While the strategists were working out this, information filtered into the ears of the lawmakers on the plans of the party and thus, the struggle for re-positioning of the offices began, breeding mutual suspicion brewed between the incumbent speaker, Dr. Oliseh Imegwu, and his deputy, Mr. Funkekeme Solomon. The animosity between the two officers divided the House into two factions. Nigerian Tribune learnt reliably from sources close to the House that the suspicion arose from the strong belief in some circles that the governor is disposed towards the deputy speaker as trustworthy to carry out the planned project.

The speaker, Honourable Imegwu, was also said to be all along uncomfortable with the intellectual depth of his deputy as well as his closeness to the governor. Fears over the fate of the governor in the governorship election petition pending at the Court of Appeal, Benin, therefore worsened the situation in the House.

Honourable Imegwu and his loyalists were said to have hatched a plan to prevent his removal, which was fundamental to the actualisation of the party’s plan in view of the fact that Uduaghan was favourably disposed to Solomon taking over from him in the event of the nullification of his election. Their contention is that Uduaghan believed that the deputy speaker would do his bidding better than Imegwu as acting governor. They came to the conclusion that members of Uduaghan’s kitchen cabinet were plotting to either remove Imegwu or suspend him to enable Solomon to act as speaker. They alluded to a precedent when the immediate past governor, Chief James Ibori, cleverly sustained his Urhobo kinsman, Chief Pius Ewherido, as acting speaker between 1999 and 2003. Uduaghan and Solomon hail from Delta South Senatorial District of the state.

The stage was thus set for the removal of the deputy speaker, a third-term lawmaker, representing Burutu 11 Constituency and to truncate whatever plans Governor Uduaghan’s loyalists had put in place to remove the speaker. The suspicions were on, but loyalists of the speaker waited for the appropriate time to strike. That time came when Governor Uduaghan traveled to India with Vice President Goodluck Jonathan on a state function and the deputy speaker was away to London.

A major victim of the mayhem and utter chaos at the House was Honourable Frank Enekoroha, a former speaker of the House, who was beaten into a pulp by the marauding youths who invaded the House, with everyone, including policemen, running for safety. When the dust of the crisis settled, the Chairman, House Committee on Information, Honourable Abel Oshevire, issued a statement in which it was announced that the deputy speaker, suspected to have sponsored the thugs, had been suspended.

But, when the House resumed a few days later, with the thought that the speaker had succeeded and was in total control of the legislative arm, another twist to the saga emerged as the tide changed against Imegwu himself. Most of the lawmakers that were in his camp switched overnight. This was made possible, according to a source, by an earlier meeting between the governor, some members of his kitchen cabinet and the lawmakers in Warri. During the meeting, it was alleged that the governor impressed it hard on the legislators that they had to continue to support his cause, considering what they had been benefitted from the executive arm of government since May 29 last year.

“In fact, they were made to realise that if the tide should change with the outcome of the impending judgment, they could not sure that whoever took over as governor would be disposed towards them like Dr. Uduaghan,” the source told the Nigerian Tribune. With this development, the lawmakers were reportedly mandated to effect the removal of the speaker and his deputy. On this fateful day, April 22, the former speaker, Honourable Imegwu, got a bitter dose of politicking as he was humiliated, beaten, disgraced and ‘stabbed’ at the back, even by those he thought were his allies. Amid serious hullabaloo, he and his deputy were impeched. At the end of the confusion, Honourable Martins Okonta was made new speaker of the House, while Basil Ganagana was elected deputy speaker.

As the House members take stock of the April 22 events, the people of Ndokwa ethnic nationality have protested the manner in which their son, Honourable Imegwu, was removed from office.

What is going to happen next is what political pundits are yet to guess rightly. For instance, they are expecting another round of crisis which would come when it is time to remove the newly-elected speaker and his deputy in order to pave way for the former deputy speaker, Funkekeme Solomon, to assume his “reserved” position, courtesy of the executive and the pending Court of Appeal PDP/AC governorship election petition judgment.