Why Benue lawmakers fought, by Speaker

Speaker of the Benue State House of Assembly, Hon. Terkimbi Ikyange, speaks on his emergence as presiding officer, the brawl among lawmakers and the independence of the legislature. DGossip247 reports

The seventh Assembly in Benue State shut its doors against journalists in the state raising suspicion of fishy deals, but you have started by meeting with the media. Why the development?

You see, journalists are partners in the progress of governance. Your aspirations, policies will only be known by the people if there is a medium through which such policies would be heard.

If we have laws that are enacted by the House of Assembly, the people may likely not know except they are told and the only medium they will know these things is through journalists who are the purveyors of these information.

So I felt that I should meet with you people to let you know that we need your support to succeed in this task which we have as lawmakers.

In the seventh Assembly, we had sittings where major decisions that affected the lives of the people of Benue were taken but the public did not know, probably because we did not involve the journalists. So, in a way the people did not know that important activities and decisions were taken in the House, but I think that we have a whole lot of work to do and the present Assembly will depend largely on the media to succeed.

We were talking about ‘change’, we don’t mean changing from one political party to another; we mean changing the ways we think and the ways we do things and by so doing we are going to achieve some feats in the development of the state and the country at large.

What is the position of the present Assembly on financial autonomy for the House?

We have a new person who is now our president and I want to believe that his disposition to the idea of the arms of government being independent the way he speaks and generally his antecedents tells me that he will be supportive of this cause.

If the outgone president, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, had supported what came up from the National Assembly, when the state legislatures also voted for the financial autonomy of the legislative arm of government, by now we won’t be talking about the financial independent of the legislature. The bill was sent back to the National Assembly because Jonathan refused to assent to it.

If President Buhari is going to revisit the issue, I will assure you that there is no time that we as members of the Benue State House of Assembly will refuse to vote in support of it. This is the only way that we can have some freedom; we are depending on the goodwill of the executive arm of government to function.

What is your take on the wrangling in the state Assembly over election of principal officers, which led to some of your colleagues exchanged blows?

What happened in the Benue State House of Assembly and elsewhere shows that there is no clear cut rule that people who are in the majority will always produce the speaker of the House; it’s a matter of lobbying and talking to your colleagues and if they are convinced in your abilities that you can be their leader, they can give it to you.

I want to tell you that if the man from Labour Party had convinced members of the eighth Assembly that he is capable of becoming the speaker of the House, he would have been voted. So, there was no rule that said the people that have the majority in the House should have a speaker, but the issue was just that of simple majority.

So, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) felt that because they are 15 in number, they can have the speaker, but remember that I came from the seventh Assembly I also had colleagues who were there with me and who also knew that I had potential to be in the leadership.

There is no rule in the world that says that people in the majority will always have it. So, there was no disagreement on the issue of speakership; if you had watched the proceedings of the House, we did voting peacefully. I got 17 votes and the person that contested against me had 13 votes. I was able to convince my colleagues to vote for me, three votes came from PDP added to the ones from my party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and that was how I became the speaker.

For the position of deputy speaker, we supported somebody and eventually he won. As for other principal officers, something happened. The activities that led to me becoming the speaker actually didn’t go down well with people from the PDP. They were not comfortable with some of their members who supported an APC because they felt that they were in the majority.

So, somehow they had disagreements among themselves and it led to the expulsion of our colleague, from his constituency because of disagreements. He felt he was embarrassed because of what they did to him as a member who had served for four years should not be treated because he exppressed himself the way he wanted, he is entitled to his opinion.

So, what did he do after he was expelled from PDP?

When he was expelled, he joined APC, and what did we do to him, because of what he did, the House considered him for a position. When this happened, the PDP felt he shouldn’t have left, that there were other procedures that ought to have been followed before that decision was taken. When the letter was read about his leaving the PDP as a result of his expulsion, his colleagues in the party who were also interested in the leadership became uncomfortable and the argument that followed led to tempers not been controlled and that was what brought the crisis you saw.

The seventh assembly was rated below average in terms of carrying out oversight functions. How does the eighth Assembly intends to improve on this?

I am assuring you that by the grace of God, the eighth Assembly will do much better in terms of oversight functions; we want to improve on what we had in the seventh Assembly.

Once the standing committees are constituted, we are going to set a template of doing our jobs here as legislators. In these areas too, we need the assistance of journalists like you, because this issue of oversight , most people look at our constitutional roles that we have to play as confronting the executive arm of government for checks and balances to be in the system so that you see effectiveness in governance.

The role of over sighting is key but most times in the course of doing it, the persons that should understand what you are doing, looks at you as intruding and saying things that shouldn’t have been said.

But before these things are done and before we begin in earnest, we will sit together and talk. I will also use my position as Speaker to seek audience with the executive arm of government and talk, they will understand us from the beginning how things work at our own end. Once that is done, we will not have much of the challenges we had in the seventh Assembly.

The relationship between the legislature and the executive in the past has been that the House was looked upon as been an appendage of the governor. Does the present Assembly intends to make a difference?

I wouldn’t want to believe that the seventh Assembly of which I was a member was pocketed. When you were not part of what we were doing, there was no way you would have understood our plight.

But by the special grace of God, we are beginning on this note. You (journalists) are going to be fully incorporated in whatever we will be doing and then you will be the ones to tell the people whether we are an appendage of the executive or we are actually standing on our own.

But I want to assure you that we are going to stand as an arm of government and we will be duty bound to do what is expected of us as members of the legislative arm of government.

And as we set to do this effectively, we want to believe that our partners in this business, the executive arm of government will give us the necessary cooperation that we need. We will not be pocketed and you (journalists) should not be used against us.