Gboyega Aribisogan, the speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, claimed on Sunday that Dr. Kayode Fayemi, the outgoing governor of Ekiti State, was conspiring with lawmakers to have him removed.
Following Aribisogan’s election as Speaker on Tuesday, security personnel had already shut off the assembly complex out of concern that mayhem might break out there.
However, the Speaker laid the blame squarely at the feet of Fayemi, asking why the former governor had ignored him ever since he was elected Speaker.
“The majority of members of Assembly voted for me but few of them who felt perhaps I did not follow the directive of the former governor, Dr Fayemi, thought that they would make the state ungovernable for even the administration,” Aribisogan said during a live appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.
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“I didn’t have any quarrel with him. I sent a message to him even last night asking, ‘What is happening? Am I no longer one of your loyalists? Why did you not congratulate me?’
“Up till now that I’m speaking with you, he has not done anything. Otherwise, he has been going around calling our members to go and impeach me tomorrow. That is the truth.
“As I’m speaking with you, seven of our members are locked up in Fem Guest House in Ado Ekiti, planning on how to impeach me tomorrow in cahoots with some of his former aides like the former commissioner for justice.”
Yinka Oyebode, the governor of Ekiti State’s chief press secretary, dismissed the accusations as an internal dispute among the legislators that he thought would be settled peacefully.
“What is playing out in the state House of Assembly is purely legislative affairs. I want to believe that the leadership of the house and also the leadership of the party will resolve it amicably.
“The information we have and that the police reported about the locking up of the place is that some hoodlums were about burning down the place a couple of days ago and because of that, some of them were even chased away while some jerrycans of fuel and cutlasses were recovered from them,” he said.
Oyebode noted that the executive arm of government did not have much to do with the matter as the House of Assembly members were elected representatives of the people of their constituencies.
“They are there to make laws for orderliness in the state. I believe they are up to the task to resolve it amicably among themselves,” he said.
“The stance of the governor is that he’s a democrat and he’s the head of the government. He also believes there is separation of power and every arm of government has a measure of independence.”
