Following Thursday’s siege on the National Assembly by security agents, Lagos lawyer, Festus Keyamo, has alleged that there was a plot to impeach the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, and replace him with his deputy, Emeka Ihedioha, by PDP legislators last Thursday.
The House of Representative members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, who recently defected to the APC, were prevented from entering the National Assembly complex by the Nigerian police last week.
Mr. Keyamo who stated this in a press statement issued said the plot was “unusual in our kind of democratic environment”.
“Let us not forget too that there was a real plot (not unusual in our kind of democratic environment) to allow only a handful of PDP legislators into the chambers to “impeach” the Speaker and install the Deputy Speaker as “Speaker”.
“The other lawmakers had no option but to do all that was legal and necessary to stop that illegality which included scaling that fence,” Mr. Keyamo stated.
“It would have been total cowardice on the part of the affected lawmakers for them to fold their arms and do nothing about the situation,” he continued.
He disagreed with those who criticise the lawmakers who scaled the gate of the assembly complex, saying they “are actuated by misinformation, partisan politics, and lack of knowledge of the law or plain bias. I completely disagree with those condemnations”.
He said the police action was illegal as there was no court document or legislative order backing their action and the Police should have invited the leadership of the National Assembly to a meeting if they truly had information that thugs would invade the National Assembly
“The Police in this case, engaged in pure illegality by barricading the gates of the National Assembly, even if they did so on the orders of the Inspector-General of Police. The orders of the I.G.P do not
amount to law and he is not a demigod to decide who enters any premises or not,” Mr. Keyamo wrote.
Mr. Keyamo who said he was proud of the “gate-jumping” legislators urged the House of Representatives members to jump more gates to save Nigeria’s democracy.
”They should keep jumping and jumping and jumping over gates, fences, walls and huddles if that will save our democracy. That is the only way to go,” he said.
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