The Speaker of House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, has directed Rep. Abdulmumin Jibrin (APC-Kano) and Rep. Mohammed Kazaure (APC-Jigawa) to defend their media comments against National Assembly.
Giving the order at plenary on Wednesday, Dogara asked the lawmakers to appear before members of Committee on Ethics and Privileges for the clarification of their statements.
This followed the call by Rep. Sunday Karimi (Kogi-PDP) for the invocation of Matters of Privileges enshrined in House Rule 6, Order 2.
Karimi alleged that Jibrin, in a press statement, said that the joint executive session of the National Assembly held on Tuesday could pass as a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) executive session.
Jibrin had said in the statement that “almost all house members and senators that spoke at the session are of PDP while members of APC declined joining the discussion to avoid a rowdy confrontation.
Karimi said that he took exception to the comments of Jibrin and urged the house to forward the matter to the relevant committee for proper action.
It would be recalled that Jibrin once appeared before the same committee in 2016 over his budget padding allegation against the leadership of the House.
After investigations, Jibrin was suspended for 180 legislative days and asked to apologise to the house in writing before he was allowed to return.
He resumed legislative duties in March, 2018 after serving his suspension and apologising to the house.
In his contribution, Rep. Nicholas Ossai (PDP-Delta) said that Kazaure had at a press conference alleged that he (Ossai) was collating signatures of lawmakers to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari.
Ossai said that the action of Kazaure could render him helpless if his constituents took him to task for trying to impeach the president without their consent.
In his ruling, Dogara said that he had a problem with lawmakers who did not attend plenary regularly but were often the first to approach the media when a resolution was reached.
He said that the joint executive session of the National Assembly was opened to all, adding that no lawmaker was restricted.
The speaker mandated the committee to report back to the house two weeks after resuming from two weeks recess which would commence on Thursday.
