178 new members-elect on Thursday declared support for Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamilla, to emerge Speaker of the 9th Assembly.
Hon. Onofiuk Luke, Speaker of Akwa-Ibom State, who spoke on behalf of the other members at New Chelsea Hotel in Abuja, said they were endorsing Gbajabiamiila because he is the most qualified.
His words: “I am the Speaker of Akwa-Ibom State and here with me; are newly-elected members of the House of Representatives and this is a conglomeration of people of different parties. I am of the PDP. We have members of the APC here.
“We have members of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), we have people from Action Alliance (AA), we have people from ACP and we have people from ADC. It’s a multi-party arrangement.
“We decided to convene ourselves as newly elected members of the House of Representatives to look at the emergence of the next leadership of the 9th assembly and in doing so; we looked through the antecedents and credentials of those who are aspiring to lead the National Assembly.
“And we acknowledge the fact that this country today; with the challenges that we have that we need a bipartisan approach to solve the problem of Nigeria and the person and the man that has shown that credibility, capacity, that has what it takes even as reflected in his manifesto, to carry the entire parties along in resolving and solving the issues of Nigeria, the man who will not mortgage the independence of the legislature but at the same time would not engage the executive in unnecessary fisticuffs, a man who will build a good relationship between the executive and the legislature, between the legislature and the judiciary.
“And we have resolved today, to have come from our different states, from our different constituencies and we have found as newly-elected members, having looked through the credentials and the CV, we have found Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila as a man who has a capacity to lead the 9th National Assembly as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“We know that he is not going to let Nigerians down and we know and believe that he is not going to let us down and we know and believe that he is not going to let God down.”
