A spokesperson for the Turaki Vanguard, Mr Chris Nwaokobia has asked Adams Oshiomhole to approach the issue of who leads the 9th National Assembly, with a bit of humility.
Mr. Nwaokobia made the call on Thursday when he featured as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
He said the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress must understand that the tussle for who leads NASS should be about the Nigerian people and not just a thing of party supremacy.
Nwaokobia’s statements were in reaction to a claim by Adams Oshiomohole suggesting that the APC must hold all leadership positions in the National Assembly because “Nigerians voted the ruling party massively“.
Oshiomhole had further stated at a meeting between the party leadership and the elected, re-elected lawmakers at the Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja, that the key positions at the 9th NASS should be held by APC members in a bid to ensure that the party achieves its agenda and executes perfectly the manifesto it presented to the masses during the campaigns.
Nwaokobia who was a former member of the ruling party, however, had a different opinion about the working synergy between the Presidency and National Assembly which was at the heart of Oshiomhole’s argument.
“Let me say that every time I hear the chairman of the All Progressives Congress talk, I wonder whether he has this principle of PPO disposition on every issue.
“I say this, they are always blaming everybody in charge of the National Assembly for their failures and they forget that a sizable bulk stops at the President’s table and now they are telling us that they want to have their way at the level of the National Assembly because they want to deliver on their manifesto.
“There are several things they have left undone in 2015, there are several things that they have left undone up until now, and I wonder how that will work. But let me say this, that the party called the All Progressives Congress must understand that a highly progressive world expects more than this politics and the gerrymandering we see in the political space,” Nwaokobia opined.
The Turaki Vanguard spokesman further noted that inside the hallowed chambers, the legislators are friends and they deal with themselves as “friends and ‘partners-in-progress’”.
He was of the opinion that when the lawmakers get into the parliament, they will decide who is best to lead them as Senate President and House Speaker.
Nwaokobia however, warned the parliamentarians that the task of the 9th is steeper than those of the past.
“What I beg of the 9th Assembly is to understand that the challenges of leadership and national growth are far more stringent now than ever before, Nigerians are expecting better governance,” he said.
Further dissecting Oshiomholes’s claim that Nigerians voted the APC massively, and as such all top positions in NASS should be held by party members, Nwaokobia said the APC chairman must learn to address such issues with a bit of humility, especially because so many cases still linger at the electoral tribunals.
“We have never seen the kind of cases, over 700 litigations regarding the last elections, so the question is whether Nigerians voted massively for the APC, the question is whether Nigerians actually massively voted the representatives and until these cases are dealt with in the courts of law, I think that Adams Oshiomhole should learn a bit of humility,” he said.
Nwaokobia surmised that in a presidential democracy, the focus should be on the interest of the people and not on party supremacy, hence the APC must try to negotiate the leadership of the National Assembly with other parties.
