Frank Okiye, the speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly, has given reason why the former deputy speaker of the legislative chamber, Yekini Idiaye, was impeached earlier today.
Mr Idiaye was oust from office a day after he pledged his support to Osagie Ize-Iyamu, the gubernatorial candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in the September 19 election.
But in a press conference held after removing the embattled lawmaker, Okiye, who called for the intervention of President Muhammadu Buhari, alleged that information at his disposal indicated that Idiaye was conspiring with the opposition APC to violently takeover the assembly complex currently under fumigation over Coronavirus disease.
Hope Uzodinma, the governor of Imo State was also fingered as one of the arrowheads plotting what the speaker described as dubious.
“We have it on good authority, the dubious plans by the governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodinma, and the stakeholders of APC in Edo State to import a fake maze to take over the Edo State House of Assembly working in cohort with the former deputy speaker who recently declared his support for the governorship candidate of APC to congregate in a separate location to illegally and violently take over the Edo State House of Assembly as brought to our notice,” the speaker alleged.
“And so, we call on the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari and the presidency to urgently call this governor and others working with him to execute this illegal plan to desist and allow the laws of the state to guide them.
“The state polity is already heated up by the political tension from the various electioneering campaign. Their planned action is likened to lightening a match in an already tensed political environment which conflagration is capable of causing crisis in the state and may scale beyond imagination.
“We call on Edo State people, whose mandate and interest the state legislature holds and protect, to rise against this attack and plot to subvert their will and subjugate them using external forces.
“We urge lovers of democracy across the world and institutions that uphold democracy and value, as well as pro-democracy groups to denounce this planned illegality that seems to distract a duly constituted authority.
“We recognize the constitutional rights of the three members of the Assembly to support the candidate of their choice but that should not distract them from coming to work to carry out the job for which they were elected and become an agent of mutiny against their own primary constituencies.
“We are as always committed to protecting the democratic rights of our people as the legislature remains the sacred institution in the democratisation process signed by my honourable self on behalf of the Edo State House of Assembly,” Okiye added.
