The Chief Whip in the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2007, Alhaji Abubakar Bawa Bwari, has disagreed with former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his remarks that Speaker of the House, Alhaji Ghali Naaba, was given N5million to unseat him (Obasanjo)
Bawa Bwari in a statement made available to newsmen in Minna Niger State said former President Obasanjo’s statement
“Does a grave injustice to the memory of our late former speaker and my dear friend”.
The former Chief Whip declared: “It is trite law that a speaker, no matter how influential, cannot single-handedly remove a president. It requires a constitutional two-thirds majority of the entire House, followed by a rigorous, concurrent process in the Senate.”
He asked: “Was this N5 million therefore intended for Ghali alone, or was it meant to be distributed across 360 members of the House and 109 Senators, and Senate President Anyim Pius to purchase a constitutional coup?”
Bawa Bwari said the late Speaker Ghali Naaba “was far too sophisticated a political scientist, and far too deeply principled an institutionalist, to ever engage in an enterprise so hollow” adding that he (Naaba) was “simply too committed a democrat to dabble into such shenanigans.
“If anything, his Speakership was the one constantly assailed by fifth columnists sponsored by the executive to remove him (Naaba) adding that, “Indeed, on one occasion we were forced to take the extraordinary step of displaying on the floor of the house, the money some members took from the presidency as inducements to impeach Ghali from office”.
Bawa Bwari observed that the House leadership was actually quite wary of Vice President Atiku Abubakar during those specific standoffs saying, “We viewed him not as an ally in any impeachment drive, but as President Obasanjo’s chief envoy and defender claiming that whenever the friction between the executive and the legislature reached a boiling point, it was Atiku who frequently appeared at our doorsteps.
The former chief Whip also recalled several interventions by prominent and respected Nigerians who helped to douse tensions between the lawmakers and former president Olusegun Obasanjo saying that then speaker Ghali Naaba“respected the presidency, even as we fiercely guarded the independence of the legislature”.
His words: “Ghali Na’Abba’s battles with the executive were never personal, nor were they transactional. He was driven by an unyielding devotion to the doctrine of the separation of powers.
“He believed, with every fiber of his being, that for Nigerian democracy to survive its infancy, the legislature could not afford to be an appendage of the executive.
“He fought valiantly for constitutional integrity, and the democratic credentials we enjoy today”
He concluded that the lawmakers then did what they did under his leadership for purely ideological reasons.
“We did not seek bribe nor were we willing to accept it in order to become a rubber stamp legislature. We fought a gallant fight and suffered for it; a great many of us, including Ghali, were denied the ticket to return to the parliament or win primaries, and posterity will judge us fairly for doing the best we could in the circumstances.”
Laleye Dipo
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