Newly-elected Speaker of Edo State House of Assembly, Elizabeth Ativie, speaks on why her predecessor was kicked out of office. She also talks on the agenda of the Assembly under her leadership, among other issues. Special Correspondent, TITUS OISE, covered the session.
Emergence as Edo House Speaker
The former Speaker was very corrupt. He was high-handed in managing his colleagues. We’re all equals; he was just first among equals. We all contested election and came to the House together. We also elected him to be our Speaker. He did not know anything about the finances of the House. What came in and what went out of the House, he didn’t know. That was not right.
All the resources that come to the House are stipulated, including how they should be used. But he came up with his own men and just moved everything.
Members were not being taken care of properly, to the extent that you would even observe that they were living like paupers.
I don’t want to go into his reckless spending. Almost one year in office, members could not even feed properly. The most annoying one was that each time members complained to the POC (Principal Officers of the Council) that they were supposed to take care of them, they were given the responsibility of liaising, doing all the letters to the executive.
They failed because those resources were being diverted for personal uses and not for what they were meant for. The most painful thing was that when we asked, he (deposed Speaker) told us that it was the chief executive that was not releasing it and would incite us to be fighting the chief executive. That led to almost three months of war between us and the chief executive. But the chief executive one day told the leaders of the party that he was going to expose these things; that the fight was enough. Then he called a meeting of honourable members and asked what the issues were.
We listed what had not been released. He told us that out of the 14 items listed, he had released money for 12. He started enumerating the figures before the members. We had heard that before but when we asked the former Speaker, he would deny it; he would give us a particular figure and we would believe him. That’s why people wondered why we had to wait for almost one year to move against him. It is because we believed whatever he told us. Therefore, we had it in mind that it was the chief executive that was punishing us, until the man opened up and he (former Speaker) did not deny it. He did not argue with the man. That was when members came back and said, this must stop.
We just have 2016. By 2017 and 2018, we would be preparing for another election. When, then, will you be able to do something in your constituency that you can use to campaign?
Now, we are going for governorship election. We cannot even go home to talk to our people because we cannot do one-tenth of those things we had done that our people saw that made them vote for us to come back. So, what has happened?
It was then that members started going to the papers. Civil servants were bringing them out and it became very clear. At that point, some members vowed that they would not lead us again. They insisted that those people that were fingered, that is the Speaker and his Deputy, must go.
Apart from that, you also know that our level of productivity had gone down as a House. That was what ached me most because I was there during the time of Zakawanu Garuba and that of Uyi Igbe. I knew what legislation was then and what it is today.
Nobody is researching, nobody is doing anything. When the head is rotten, what do you expect from other parts of the body? This new set of lawmakers are educated. Many of them are widely-travelled. Some of them are former local government council chairmen. They are not babies. Some of them are activists. You cannot cheat them.
The moment that cheating was established, anger flared. In the process of trying to take care of this anger, more revelations were made every day.
New revelations came up every day. The recent revelation was that a certain amount of money was paid into his personal account. That was why I announced that we were setting up a committee. We actually set up a committee to look at our finances from June last year to May this year because every day new revelations come out.
In fact, I just told some people that I won’t start spending any money until proper auditing is done, and the line drawn for everyone to know where I am starting from. I don’t want to be part of that mess. I have come a long way.
My integrity, my personality and all that I have achieved as a former youth leader in this state and at the federal level, leader of women and youths, cannot be messed up.
I have to sustain that integrity that I have built over the years.
I have just told my aide that we are going to write to the chief auditor to send us an auditor to come and audit the account of the establishment, so that after this I will have my own clean slate. At the end of my tenure, let people come and audit me too.
We are going to bring sanity to the House. If you had been entering the chambers, you would see that in recent times when we were sitting, some hoodlums would be at the gallery. That has not been part of our business. It’s responsible people that come to the gallery and watch their legislators talking about their issues.
Why are you afraid that you are going to be removed if your hands are clean; if you believe in what you are doing? Right from the day he started, you had hoodlums all over the place. You would be walking at the corridor and you would see all sorts of boys, all sorts of human beings and we don’t have such people.
Those days, when you were coming to the House of Assembly, your dressing alone would show how responsible you were. All that decorum has been thrown into the bush. But all that, we will revitalise. You know that in parliament, once the confidence is lost, there is nothing anybody can do. Parliamentary work is confidence-building. When you are talking on the floor of the House, you are talking with facts and figures, believing you are giving Edo State the true picture of things.
Assuming office despite former Speaker’s claims of being in charge
Yes, we have been working. We have had some familiarisation visit to the Commissioner of Police, the Department of State Services (DSS), and have frozen the accounts of the House. We are working now.
Retrieving Assembly property from the former Speaker
You know there are processes to that. We have to follow due process. We’ve asked the Clerk to write to him to return those things, including the mace – he took the mace away. We have also asked the Chief Whip to go and collect the mace.
Change in House leadership because of face-off between the governor and his deputy
No, far from that. We have no business with what is happening in the executive. And you’ll notice that since that (face-off) started, no member has spoken on the issue. No honourable member has followed anybody on any visit or anywhere. We’re not even interested because we want the normal thing to be done.
We are all politicians from our various constituencies. We have leaders. We have our constituencies’ mindset. You cannot go against your constituencies’ mindset. It is cheap blackmail. I read in one of the papers that we were made to go and do that, so that we can impeach the deputy governor. That was far from the truth.
He (former Speaker) is still the one that is getting people to write these things, so that there will be diversionary therapy. He wants to divert us. You know, while we have not made all these things public, we have already set up a committee of five persons headed by one Emmanuel Agbaje, who is a seasoned accountant. They are going to get us results. If he is found wanting, he would be prosecuted. But if he is not found wanting, we will recall him from suspension. Let him also feel what other members have been feeling.
Focus as Speaker
First of all, the business of legislation. We are going back to the old times in such a way that when you enter Edo State House of Assembly, with the kind of work going on there, you will be happy to call it your own Assembly.
We shall engage in robust legislation that will help the executive in carrying Edo to a higher level. The welfare of my members will be another paramount issue on my mind. You can’t ask a hungry man to go and work. One year now, we don’t have cars. It was not that Governor Adams Oshiomhole was not willing to give us the vehicles; it was the process that was causing the problem.
He (former Speaker) wanted the bulk figure of almost N500 million given to him, so that he could go and buy the cars. And the governor said he could get all those people, write surety and they will be supplying us the cars in instalments. If he had agreed to that at the initial stage, even if it was done every three months, by now we would have got 24 cars. But because of greed, he insisted that the money must be paid into our account for him to go and buy the cars.
He was already looking at the percentage of commission he would get. That had been our problem. This was how the honourable members looked at ourselves and said we may end up spending two years in the House with this man putting us in reverse gear. If the thing (impeachment plot) had leaked, they would have stopped us. Either the party (All Progressives Congress) or the governor would have stopped us. It didn’t leak. That was what helped us. The party would have called us, bamboozled us, or threatened us. So, to say that anybody asked us to do it for whatever political reason is not true.
