The attempt to seize power at the Anambra State House of Assembly on Tuesday, November 13, 2018, was doomed from the outset. The conspirators took for granted the resolve of Ndi Anambra to defend the present reign of good governance in the State.
The plot to remove the Speaker of the State Assembly, Rt Hon Rita Maduagwu was driven by mercantile politics.
A couple of weeks to the failed impeachment, the lawmakers involved held series of meetings at hotels in Awka with moneybag politicians angling for the 2019 elections. Deals were soon struck to begin an orderly destabilisation of the State Government beginning with the seizure of the Assembly’s Speakership.
Driven by greed and haste, the actors turned blind eyes to the rules of engagement. The announced figure of 18 members in support of the impeachment move was not the case. At least two members whose signatures were forged as among the proponents of impeachment cried blue murder over the falsification. For having the courage and decency to unmask the deceit, the henchmen of impeachment declared the purported suspension of Hon Paschal Agbodike and Hon Uche Okafor.
Similarly, Hon Obinna Emeneka who was out of town had condemned the smuggling of his name into a retrogressive line of action.
More members have continued to turn their backs to the conspiracy on realisation of the sinister agenda. A few members who had been recruited into the plot at the last minute on the deception that the list was to protest deductions from their emolument have since rallied behind the Speaker, Rita Maduagwu. With Hon Chugbo Enwezor and Hon Nnamdi Okafor out of the country and their stand unconfirmed, the number of the rebelling legislators stood at 13.
Conscious of their minority status, they dodged the statutory requirement of calling for individual votes on the question of whether Hon Rita Maduagwu was to step down as Speaker. Without voting on the issue, the presiding Deputy Speaker, Hon Harford Okeke, who had just returned from his monitoring of activities at Government House, then announced the election of a new Speaker.
What could be more childish? Wisely, the Clerk of the House, Mr Pius Udoh declined to swear in the purported new Speaker.
There could be no swearing in because there was no valid step taken to remove the Speaker Rita Maduagwu and there was no recognised process of electing a new Speaker. It requires 20 members to oust the Speaker. Why do the rebelling lawmakers think that a bag of intrigues, lies and noisy propaganda can change this fact? Well, they have to be seen as discharging the contract entered into with the moneybag politicians from Abuja.
Shortly after, the Speaker, Hon Rita Maduagwu convened the House and forming the quorum, the more purposeful and well meaning members went into serious legislative business.
The outrage that greeted the rascality by the 13 impeachment legislators should be a clear message to them and their politically ambitious sponsors that Ndi Anambra will not permit any playing with the fortunes of the State.
