The National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Sunday urged members of the House of Representatives, who scaled the gate of the National Assembly to gain access into the hallowed chambers, to do it again if the police should stop them from gaining access.
“If the police repeats this again, I will encourage them to do exactly the same”, he said on Politics Today.
He said the lawmakers “outsmarted the police, the PDP and the Presidency, whose game plan was to get the Speaker impeached”.
He also urged Nigerians not to be carried away by the way and manner the members gained entrance into the complex, but “look at what actually led to this”.
He noted that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal put “national interest over that of his personal security” and reconvened the House at the request of President Jonathan to extend the State of Emergerncy in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno States, knowing that “the President and his party want to impeach him.
“But he got to the second gate of the Complex and he was prevented from getting into the National Assembly”, adding that “he got down from his vehicle, introduced himself, but all the policemen there turned deaf ears”.
He defended the action of the lawmakers, maintaining that the act of the lawmakers has “preserved democracy, otherwise what we would have been facing now will be a situation where either the Speaker would have been impeached by now or there will be chaos all over the country”.
He further noted that the reason given by the police to deploy officers to the complex was baseless, insisting that “I did not see any motley crowd neither did I see thugs from the footage”, adding that it would have been wrong for the lawmakers to seek redress elsewhere at that point in time.
Mr Mohammed, who alleged that the Sergeant-At-Arms of the National Assembly was detained for hours due t his refusal to submit the Mace to the police, wondered what the “business the Nigeria Police has with the Mace on the eve of that incident”.
He also said treasonable charges should be leveled against “those policemen who caused the mayhem at the National Assembly that day by preventing the Principal person in the House access into the House”.
He maintained that if the people in Ekiti had done the same, seven persons wouldn’t have been able to impeach the Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly.
But in a swift reaction on Politics Today, former Aviation Minister, Mr Femi Fani Kayode disagreed with the APC scribe insisting that “the premise on which Alahaji Lai Mohammed has chose to justify the action of some members of the House that day are faulty” and “he does not have the right information”.
He said there was no plan to impeach the Speaker as alleged by Mr Mohammed and noted that “it was not only the Speaker that was shut out. The Senate President himself was also shut out and took him a lot of efforts to get in”.
He noted that “regardless of whatever reasons that were given by the police, legitimate or illegitimate, the most fundamental issue is that when a cordon has been established, we are all expected to behave in a lawful and a refined manner.
“We are not expected to defy the police, break the line, jump over fences and break down walls and act as if we are in a market place”, he said.
