Tambuwal steps down as Speaker, Ihedioha to preside over affairs

SPEAKER of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, would be presiding over the affairs of the lower legislative chamber for the last time today.

Tambuwal’s tenure as Speaker of the House of Representatives is billed to end on June 4th 2015.

He won the governorship poll in Sokoto State and would be heading to Sokoto after today’s proceedings to be sworn in as the state governor on Friday.

Yesterday, the issue of the vacuum to be created in Tambuwal’s absence and how to manage the situation formed the agenda of discourse among members of the House of Representatives who had to broke into a technical session for over an hour.

At the end of the discourse, which explored the possibility of electing a new Speaker of the House who would take charge of the House till June 4th, it was resolved that the Deputy Speaker of the House, Emeka Ihedioha, should take the place of Tambuwal till the expiration of his tenure.

The Speaker who confirmed the development at a valedictory interactive session with reporters covering the House of Representatives justified the decision, saying it was borne out of the need not to leave a vacuum in the running of the House.

He explained that due to the lacuna, members of the House were left with no option but to adopt what he termed a “doctrine of necessity “ whereby the standing rule would have to be suspended at the plenary today to take care of his absence. 

According to him: “In that way, we would have acted within the confine of the law. We would have solved the issue of indispensability. Nobody is indispensable, including me. It is the institution first, which is more important than anybody. So we agreed that this is how it should be. Nobody can shut down the House.”