The Edo State Police Command has called on stakeholders in the state to wade into the crisis rocking the State House of Assembly before its escalates.
The State Commissioner of Police, Foluso Adebanjo, made the call on Monday while addressing reporters outside the Assembly as the crisis entered its fourth week.
The crisis started after four of the members were suspended on allegation of misconduct.
After their suspension, the four lawmakers and five other members of the State House held a session and suspended the speaker and few other members of the House, insisting that they had been suspended without an offence.
Before the commissioner of police addressed reporters, lawmakers of the Peoples Democratic Party resumed sitting again outside the Assembly Complex, but the All Progressives Congress lawmakers were however absent. They promised to reconvene on Wednesday.
Addressing reporters after sitting out for four hours, a member of the Edo State House of Assembly and one of the suspended lawmakers, Friday Ogieriakhi, said they would only obey orders from a competent court, dismissing a court order that had restricted them from entering the premises of the assembly.
Another suspended lawmaker, Fetus Ebea, said that their Offices had been locked, since the court order was issued.
On Sunday, Mr Ogieriakhi of the People Democratic Party (PDP), said he was not aware of the ‘alleged misconduct’ they were accused of that led to their suspension, insisting that they should have been given fair hearing.
Mr Ogieriakhi said that the suspension was unexpected and described it as a development that had showed the “monstrosity of the kind of tyranny that the state lawmakers were dealing with in Edo State under the leadership of the governor, Adams Oshiomhole”.
“It is so unfortunate that lawmakers, because of loyalty to party, would lend themselves to this kind of shame. For you to punish a man, the man should be given fair hearing. No form of trial or hearing was given to my colleagues and I who were allegedly suspended.
“For all we know, these honourable members were just acting out the script of their pay master who is in Osadebe Avenue. I am not aware of any misconduct we were accused of,” he said.
The crisis has caused the state assembly to stop the process of law making, but Mr Ogieriakhi said that the way forward would be for the other house members to purge themselves of the very disrespectful conduct that they embarked upon.
The Edo State Commissioner of Police’s call for intervention by stakeholders is aimed at ending the crisis.
