Impeached, suspended members are black legs — Kogi House of Assembly

The Kogi State House of Assembly has alleged that the three impeached and suspended members of the House are black legs whose stock in trade was to cause disharmony between the executive and legislative arms of government and amongst members of the house.

The house’s position followed the deliberation on the discovery that the suspended lawmakers allegedly forged members’ signatures in what the house described as evil machinations to impeach the Speaker.

Recall that three lawmakers, Hon. Ahmed Ahmed former Deputy Speaker, Hon. Abdullahi Bello, former Majority Leader and Hon. Moses Ododo, former Chief Whip, who were last week impeached and suspended, released a statement where they claimed to have purportedly carried out an impeachment of the Speaker by a notice signed by eighteen members.

Consequently, the House at its plenary on Tuesday ordered its Ethics and Privileges committee to commence investigation into the alleged forgery as members whose signatures were found in the documents have denied ever signing any impeachment notice against the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Mathew Kolawole.

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All the members who spoke on the issue maintained that they at no time signed an impeachment notice, saying the signatures attached to the purported impeachment notice were signatures signed by members in May this year endorsing the Presidential Aspiration of Gov. Yahaya Bello.

They accused the former Deputy Speaker of betrayal of trust, pointing out that the signatures collected to serve as an attachment to the communique endorsing Governor Yahaya Bello’s Presidential ambition was maliciously used by him to further his inordinate ambition of removing the speaker

Members maintained that though, the members in question are already on suspension, the issue should be thoroughly investigated and appropriate punishment meted out on them to serve as a deterrent.

The House members described the actions of the former Principal Officers as shameful, and reprehensible and demanded an unreserved apology from them.

Ruling on the matter, the Speaker, Prince Mathew Kolawole described the action of the three suspended members as a gross violation of the house rules and privileges, and directed the Chairman ethics and privileges to do a diligent investigation on the matter by giving the accused members fair hearing and report back to the house.

No time frame for the submission of the report was given.

He also thanked the members for believing in him, promising that the house under his leadership would continue to work harmoniously with the executive to provide the much-needed dividends of democracy to the people of the state.