Those who attempted to remove me are baby legislators - Bamisile

Hon Bamisile Honourable Femi Bamisile, who was recently reported impeached as the Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, in this interview conducted by DAPO FALADE, insists that he remains the Speaker since he could not be removed through flawed processes.

WHAT really transpired in the House on that fateful Tuesday afternoon? What led to the impeachment exercise carried out against you by 18 members of the state legislature?
I think we finished the parliamentary session around 1:30 pm and we tried to put some bills together before the end of the day. So we got to the floor of the House around 2:30 in the afternoon and the normal House proceedings began. After the prayers, the Leader of Business, after the acceptance of vote to proceed, was asked to proceed with the Order of the Day but as soon as he finished and put the question to me, Hon Funminiyi Afuye raised an objection, he asked for an observation and he was granted. He said that based on the SIEC; itsd passage and the judgment of the two High Courts, he said that he wanted to move the motion that I have been impeached.

At that point, Hon Bisi Kolawole from Efon Constituency told him that all he was saying was not on the Order Paper and that it was not discussed and that, if there was, no committee discussed the issues raised by Afuye. He said that if Afuye could recollect and take his mind back, none of the issues he was raising was ever discussed on the floor of the House, either at the plenary or in the parliamentary. So, he has no basis for what he was doing. Immediately, I turned back to Hon Afuye and told him that he had probably forgotten that he is not the House Leader of Business; he probably thinks that because he has been ascribed as the Action Congress (AC) Leader in the House, he could move a motion to impeach the Speaker of the House. I immediately overruled him and moved back to the normal Order of the Day. But before we could continue, the entire chambers became rowdy and before I knew it, few memebers had moved for the mace of the House and, in the course of struggling with the Sergent-at-Arms, they broke the mace into three pieces and immediately they ran out of the Assembly Complex. We later learnt that they went to Olujoda Hotels where they now crowned their so-called Speaker.

If you had seen the whole proceedings, without me saying too much, you will fault the entire process. Nobody is saying that they should not initiate an impeachment process but the thing is that there are proceedings to follow. These are the same people who said that what we did concerning the SIEC was illegal. If you believe in due process and legality, you will not want to perpetrate illegality. Let me precisely take you to the process of impeachment which is very simple for the whole world to see. We have seen what happened in Abuja , the Patricia Etteh saga; we have seen what happened in Ogun State- simple process, simple proceedings and that is all we are asking-due process because of the rule of law. What process means is that you serve a Speaker an impeachment notice at the Parliamentary and a pro-tempore Speaker takes over his seat immediately; you move on to the floor of the House, the pro-tempore Speaker is asked to go to the seat of the Speaker and the process begins. Questions are being put and divisions coming to play. It is as simple as that. Even if it takes 25 lawmakers against one to impeach the Speaker, we must follow the rule of law, the process must be initiated. But if you look at what happened here, it was an act of gangsterism, some group of people who felt they could muzzle their way into the House. But in Ekiti we are not going to accept that.

Before that very day, the rumour had been rife that some members of the legislature had been going round collecting signatures all aimed at perfecting the impeachment plan against you. What steps did you take to forestall such a move and unite all the members?
Let me tell you something, thank God you are an Ekiti-based journalist and you must have followed the series of some events in the State. Let me take you back to about two and half months ago before we ever sat on the SIEC screening that they claimed was illegal. But I can assure you that what we did was right because 10 people sat for the screening exercise but unfortunately, the Judiciary which we respect so much, within its own confines said that what we did was illegal and I think I was the first person to appeal to the executive not to appeal the judgment, that we are okay with it. That is a way to try to bring everybody together and almost immediately we re-opened the House. I was the same person who tried to put heads together for us to actually meet to find a way to open the House again after our adjournment sine dine. For two months, a lot of people around the country felt that hell will break loose the day we re-opened. But we successfully reconvened and we started deliberations in the House as civil individuals. We have a lot of the honourable members on tape who said that by the grace of God, we will not experience such a bad thing that happened in the House to happen again.

You see, these people have their own set agenda, that is where I am trying to get to; so they actually lured us into re-opening, believing that they had an ace but, I can assure you, we were well prepared because I knew that signatures were being gathered but unfortunately as they were preparing themselves, we too were preparing legally too and this is one of the preparation. Even the day we went on the floor, for the benefit of hindsight, a lot of us knew what they were coming to do there but I knew that they were not going to be successful in the first place because the only person who can move the motion for impeachment is the Leader of Business and if you have the Leader of Business with you, the rest is history. So, we wanted to show the world that they are baby legislators as I have rightly said once. We knew they were getting the signatures but we went out of our way to appease their minds, open the House, even we did so many things that I cannot start talking about openly.

Five PDP lawmakers were signatories to the impeachment move. Don’t you see this as an indication of a deep crack in the walls of the party itself and is there any possibility of sanction?
You could say that but that is a party issue I will not want to talk about openly because I am a party man to the core . The issue of the five brothers within the PDP caucus in the House, we do not want to wash our dirty linen in the public; we will leave it for the party to solve and it will take a decision on it. However, it is a fact; it is known to the world now that there is a bit of crack within the PDP but I can assure you that within a short time, the PDP is the largest party in Africa and there is a mechanism to resolve our crisis within, and when that mechanism comes into play, we will mend those fences.

As regards the issue of sanction, I am not the party. What they did amounted to anti-party activities but when the party sits down and looks at everything involved and how it came into play, it will take a decision. I don’t want to jump the gun to begin to pre-empt the party as to the decision it is going to take. But to me, we are all human, things do happened for some reasons and people are being given opportunities in life. I believe strongly that even after we might have sat to resolve the whole issues, I know that we can find a way around it without any sanction.

Beside the SIEC issue, the other burning issue is the controversy surrounding the purchase of cars for the lawmakers. The insinuation is that in the course of the purchase, you used your position to pocket the extra on the amount budgeted. Your reaction?
You see, if my brothers are still saying that now, after about eight months and after we had set up a committee in the House to investigate Mr. Speaker on the purchase of the vehicles and I was never find guilty; the report of the committee is out and if some people are still going about talking about the issue, then you can see how petty they are. They do not have anything to talk about. Sometime recently at a seminar we went for in Abuja , somebody said that you don’t even need to have a reason if you want to impeach Mr. Speaker. He is the first among equals; you might just like his face or you may say he had spent a long time in the House, we need him out. You don’t need a reason, but I will appreciate that and understand. Tell me, ‘Mr. Speaker we are tired of your leadership’, that is fine and we will follow the normal process. If you say that, it does not mean I will naturally leave the office for you, but if there is a normal procedure. If you claim to have two-third, go through the normal channel. So, it is not about purchase of vehicles; these are mere allegations that cannot be substantiated because like I said, a committee was set up, I was investigated and nothing came out of it and this is seven months down the line. So, if it is still burning in some people, that means they have a hiding agenda; there is still something burning within them which they cant say and I hope they will be man enough to come out and say, ‘we don’t like your face’.

But your colleagues are saying that you have this stand-offish approach, that you are arrogant and that you don’t carry them along in whatever you do.
That is interesting, you see I have heard it myself; some would say they don’t like the way I wear my hat, that I am more of the Basorun of the old era, some say I am arrogant. But please, ever before I came into government, I have been my own person and I choose to have my own friends that I want to associate with, even in the House of Assembly. The most important thing is that whoever I tried to associate with should be able to extend his hand of fellowship to me too. For instance, about a week ago, I was coming from Hon. Kolawole’s residence in Efon-Alaaye, we both stopped at Hon. Gbenga Odebunmi’s house at Aramoko, AC lawmaker. When we got there, we saw the kids and we all played together and when I left, the man gave me a good gesture by giving me a big bottle of wine. Is that a sign of being arrogant or do you want to choose my friends for me? So, I don’t understand what they are saying and that is one of the things I am telling you. They could say, ‘yes, that is even a good excuse why the Speaker must go, that he is arrogant’, but even at that, let us go through the process of removing me. You can’t just throw a paper on the table and say yes, he has been impeached. So, that is one of the things that we are learning everyday.

With the state of things now, what is the way forward?
We have a logjam now, I will tell you sincerely; the fact is that they have the majority and we are in the minority, but we are at the helm of affairs in this state because I still occupy the seat as the Speaker of the Assembly. The so-called majority are out there in the wood, I don’t know what they are running from. We have been begging them consistently to come back to Ekiti State and if they still want to go ahead with the impeachment, they should come and do it legally. So, we can’t sit now, not because we don’t have the mace (the House has the replica of the mace). If we can form quorum legally and legitimately, we would walk into the House and sit, that is all. So, we are hoping that we can bring some sense into some of them who know that most of the things they did was wrong.

The way forward is that we are calling on them to come back into the House and we work together. Anything short of that, I don’t know.