The People’s Democratic Party has faulted the decision of the All Progressives Congress (APC) leadership of the House of Representatives to shut down sittings of various investigative committees currently investigating the executive, adding that it is a deliberate design to cover the smell of corruption “oozing out of the APC administration.”
The party then urged the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, to stop circumventing the statutory duties of the House and creating obstruction to fighting corruption by the legislature.
The spokesman of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, said this in a statement he signed in Abuja. He described the shutdown order by the APC leadership of the House of Representatives “as a clear example of corruption fighting back from within the government circle, which must be condemned by all Nigerians.”
Below is the statement, “The party notes that such incursion into the activities of the committees is to quench the fight against corruption as well as to frustrate whistleblowers just because APC has become an ocean of corruption where the members are swimming.
“It is clear that the shutdown directive is targeted at frustrating revelations from ongoing investigations on the $500 billion foreign loan from China, particularly as it relates to the mortgaging of our nation’s sovereignty to China.
“This is in addition to the investigations into the humongous corruption in government agencies including the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund, NSITF, the N300 billion unremitted revenue to the federation account as well as allegations of corruption in government earnings and the expenditure in Ministries, Department and Agencies, MDA’s under the APC.
“It is therefore unfortunate that under the Gbajabiamila-led leadership, the basic responsibility of the House of Representatives, which is its oversight on the executive, has just been maimed through a forced holiday on the members of the respective committees and their Chairmen.
“It is equally distressing that the APC leadership of the House of Representatives is breaching parliamentary rules, practices, and procedures to shield APC leaders and their cronies who have been fleecing our nation.
“Our party, therefore, holds that any parliament that deliberately frustrates its statutory responsibility to call the activities of the executive to question has lost the essence of its own existence. The leadership that led it into such constitutional suicide must be held culpable.
“Indeed, never in our parliamentary history has committee activities been suspended or shut down on the ground of holiday or suspension of plenary.
“The PDP, therefore, charges the Hon. Gbajabiamila-led APC leadership of the House of Representatives to immediately reverse itself as Nigerians expect nothing but seamless investigations without unnecessary interferences and incursions.
“If the Honourable Speaker is inclined towards allowing the covering of corruption, against the purpose for which he was elected to lead the House, then, he should take a bow and step aside.”
