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Edo House Of Assembly As Oshiomhole, Obaseki’s political chessboard
Aug 8, 2020
The resurgence of the crisis rocking the Edo House of Assembly for over one year signposts that the lawmakers have come to terms with the implication of the forthcoming governorship election in the state on their political future and are seeking to remain safe afterward.
Ahead of the September 19 governorship election in Edo State, the 13 months and three weeks old crisis rocking the state House of Assembly has returned to the front burner. Although it had never been resolved, many observers had thought it would remain in the background until the election has been won and lost but yesterday’s ‘impeachment’ of the Speaker of the House and the election of a new one has vitiated such calculations. However, what has emerged from the new twist to the crisis is that the House has more or less become the political chessboard of the major gladiators in the governorship election.
The crisis, which has its root in the supremacy battle between Governor Godwin Obaseki and former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, started on June 17, 2019, when nine of 24 members of the Assembly, who were all elected on the platform of the APC, were secretly inaugurated. The governor had earlier scheduled the proclamation of the Assembly for June 7, but it could not hold because he was said to be absent. However, while they were waiting to be inaugurated, the Clerk of the Assembly, Yahaya Omogbai, was said to have ushered nine of them into the chamber and read out the letter of proclamation transmitted to his office by Governor Obaseki at 10 p.m. on June 17. Reports had it then that the exclusion of the 15 members-elect was to prevent Oshiomhole’s loyalists from taking control of the state legislature. Thus, at the nocturnal sitting of the nine members-elect, they lawmakers elected Frank Okiye (Esan North East Constituency I) as Speaker against Oshiomhole’s preferred candidate after the proclamation.
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