By Uche Amunike
Barely six days after being in office, the Ekiti Assembly Speaker, Gboyega Aribisogan, has been impeached, Monday, by 17, out of the 25 members of the House of Assembly, while immediately electing a new one.
After the 66 year old former Speaker, Funminiyi Afuye died of Cardiac Arrest at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, the Assembly Complex was sealed as members were embroiled in a controversy trailing his death.
A month after, an election was held by the parliament and a new Ekiti Assembly Speaker, Aribisogan, emerged. He was a two-term lawmaker representing Ikole 1 Constituency.
Speaking, during the Channels Television programme, Sunday Politics, the embattled Ekiti Assembly Speaker alleged that the former Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi sponsored some lawmakers to sack him.
He alleged that Fayemi was not in support of his emergence as he saw him as a betrayer. He went on to attest that some lawmakers that were Fayemi’s loyalists had mapped out plans to impeach him during the Monday Plenary.
Aribisogan, who was former leader of Government Business, polled 15 votes to defeat his opponent, Bunmi Adelugba, stated that the occurrences in the Ekiti State Assembly since his emergence pointed towards removing him from office and imposing his opponent.
According to him in the Channels Television interview: ‘When Fayemi called us to his residence and said he wanted us to support Hon Adelugba, I stood up to say that could not be done by fiat or by imposition; that we had leaders that we had to consult and that we would get back to them. Ordinarily, we should be looking at the constitution and the standing order of the House.’
He explained that he tried his best in reaching Fayemi as at Saturday night through a text message. His words: ‘Up till now, he has not done anything on it, but he has been calling our members to go and impeach me tomorrow (Monday). As I speak with you, seven of our members are locked up in a guest house in Ado Ekiti in cahoots with some of his former aides.’
‘They don’t want democratic processes to take place in the Assembly and these people are even with arms, saying they are going to assassinate the speaker and take over the place tomorrow (Monday) morning.’
‘Majority of the members of the Assembly voted for me, but a few of them, who felt that perhaps I did not follow the directive of the former governor of the state, felt that they would make the place ungovernable for my administration’, he said.
He went on to say that Governor Oyebanji’s Special Adviser on Political Matters, promised that the government was looking into it and that there would be an amicable solution. Sadly, it wasn’t so. He urged all the traditional rulers and prominent people in the state to save democracy.
Meanwhile, the new Ekiti Assembly Speaker, Bunmi Adelugba, who has been elected and assumed office, is the first female Speaker in the Ekiti State Assembly.
