A member of the PDP caucus, Adeyinka Adeloye, said the lawmakers have the constitutional power to impeach the speaker and change the House leadership to “reflect the present realities in the state”.
In a chat with TheNiche, Adeloye, who represents Ikole 1 Constituency, said the lawmakers were constitutionally empowered to “change, arrange, re-arrange, align and realign the leadership of the Assembly”.
Adeloye, who was one of the six APC lawmakers that defected to the PDP, said the people should expect a change of leadership in the House to alter the power configuration of the state.
He added that the House’s standing order recognised the power sharing arrangement of the principal officers – in line with the senatorial districts they come from.
According to him, Omirin’s continued stay as speaker is no longer sustainable, following Fayose’s emergence as governor.
The lawmaker said Omirin, who is from Ekiti South Senatorial District, would have to go, since the Deputy Governor, Dr. Olubunmi Eleka, is also from the same senatorial district.
Adeloye said: “You know that the governor is from Central, the deputy governor from the South and at the same time, the Speaker is from the South.
“The House has the power to change leadership, and there is no novelty about this. Remember, the second Assembly had four speakers and the third Assembly had two, and if this happens again, it is not something new.
“But the whole thing depends on the leadership of the speaker. If the speaker has the acumen, the creativity, he can still hold fort. We were in the APC together before and he should not be crying foul now.”
Adeloye denied the allegation that the PDP lawmakers had been bribed to impeach Omirin.
He claimed that their action at a recent plenary was in tandem with the wishes of their constituents.
“This is the aggregate preference of our people, 26 House members against the will of the people? I want to tell you that I was an APC man to the core; in fact, I voted for former Governor Kayode Fayemi at the last governorship election, but the people of my constituency said they want me to go to the PDP.
“The people of my constituency voted for Fayose, indicating that they wanted change and the bribery issue does not arise at all,” Adeloye added.
On whether or not the PDP lawmakers’ action could stand, the lawmaker said: “Let them go to court; the House can regulate itself. In the absence of the speaker and the deputy speaker, we have the right to appoint a speaker protempore to preside and that was what we did.”
The police have also denied complicity in the ‘sitting’ by PDP legislators.
Police spokesman, Victor Babayemi, said the police did not take sides with any of the contending parties “but was carrying out its constitutional and statutory functions of forestalling the breakdown of law and order”.
He denied the allegation by the APC that its lawmakers, who heard of the illegal sitting, were turned back by mobile policemen deployed in the Assembly complex.
He also refuted the claim that armed policemen and PDP lawmakers held the Clerk of the House, Tola Esan, hostage and forced him to surrender the mace with which the “sitting” was carried out.
But Ekiti APC Publicity Secretary, Olatunbosun, said the police cannot exonerate themselves from the “illegality” carried out, alleging that partisanship of the police encouraged the desecration of the Assembly by the PDP lawmakers.
Olatunbosun, a former Commissioner for Information, said Ekiti was sliding into chaos and anarchy.
He decried what he called the “decimation of the judiciary and the legislature” in the state.
Olatunbosun said the blackmail of the APC lawmakers by Fayose’s loyalists set the tone for the latest crisis in the state.
He insisted that the allegation that the 19 APC lawmakers were bribed was sheer blackmail that was illogical and untrue.
APC Vice Chairman in Ekiti South, Kayode Babade, explained that the sealing of the Assembly showed that Ekiti was under siege.
In another dimension, APC lawmakers in the state have urged the governor to be guided by the Nigerian constitution, in dispensing executive powers.
