The House of Representatives and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr Abubakar Malami, failed on Monday to reach a compromise on the festering Kogi State House of Assembly crisis.
Malami had appeared before a panel of the House chaired by the House Leader, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, at the National Assembly on Monday.
He had been summoned to explain why he (Malami) overruled the resolution of the National Assembly to take over the affairs of the Kogi State House following the ‘impeachment’ of the Speaker, Mr. Momoh Jimoh-Lawal, by five out of the 25-member legislature.
A resolution of the House indicated that the AGF directed the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, not to comply with the decision of the National Assembly asking him to shut down the state Assembly.
Malami met with the panel behind closed doors on Monday for over one hour.
Findings showed that the AGF raised “constitutional grounds” as the lawmakers grilled him for his action of flouting the directive of the National Assembly.
A National Assembly official, who was part of the meeting, informed The PUNCH that Gbajabiamila and Malami, both lawyers, argued for several minutes, same as other members of the committee.
But, as the meeting ended, Gbajabiamila and Malami, both members of the ruling All Progressives Congress, came out smiling to create the impression that all went well indoors.
When asked about the outcome of the meeting, the House leader replied that discussions were still in progress.
He stated, “The outcome of the meeting? Well, we are making steady progress. What we have is an ongoing discussion.
“There are a lot of issues to be resolved and hopefully, we will be able to resolve them next week.”
Gbajabiamila also admitted that there was no agreement indoors on whether the AGF should revert to statusquo in line with the directive of the National Assembly.
“No, no, we didn’t go in there to come to an agreement.
“We went in there to discuss the issues, to unravel all the legal and factual issues. And this is still ongoing and by next week, we will resolve all the issues,” he replied to a question on whether there was an agreement between the two sides.
However, he added that the committee found out that there were a lot of constitutional issues between the AGF and the legislature that must be resolved quickly to avoid further disputes.
“We have found out that there are lot of constitutional issues between the AGF’s office and the National Assembly that we need to look into them not just at face value,” he said.
The committee earlier grilled Arase last week, where the IG disclosed that he sought advice from Malami on the resolution of the National Assembly.
The House had on March 9, invoked Section 11(4) of the 1999 Constitution by taking over the affairs of the Kogi Assembly in the weeks after five of the 25-member legislature, ‘impeached’ Jimoh-Lawal.
The Senate also endorsed the resolution of the House to fulfil the constitutional requirement that the “National Assembly ” could assume the duties of a state legislature whenever the latter was unable to perform its functions of lawmaking.
The National Assembly had directed Arase to seal off the assembly and deploy policemen from Abuja to Lokoja to take charge of the security of the premises.
But, the directive was flouted, forcing the House to summon the AGF and Arase to explain their actions.
Arase was said to have acted on a letter Malami wrote him, describing the resolution of the National Assembly as “illegal”, “unwarranted” and “unconstitutional”, more especially that the matter was said to be before a law court. Punch.
