The House of Representatives has faulted the call by the Peoples Democratic Party caucus on Nigerians to ask the National Assembly to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari.
The House said the call has an ulterior motive, especially as Buhari is billed to appear before the lawmakers soon, to explain the rising spate of insecurity in the country.
Leader of the PDP caucus, Kingsley Chinda, had on Sunday in a statement titled ‘PDP caucus mourns, says Nigeria saddled with the circus’, called on Nigerians to compel their representatives in the National Assembly to immediately commence impeachment proceedings against the President “gross incompetence and persistent and continuous breach of Section 14(2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution.”
Chinda had also called on members of the Federal Executive Council to invoke the provisions of Section 144 (1) of the Constitution by declaring that Buhari is incapable of discharging the functions of the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Chinda, while reacting to the recent killing of 43 rice farmers in Zambarmari area of Borno State, had said the reactions from the Presidency and the military to such killings “highlight a certain crassness and lame duck attitude that has for the past five years come to define the Buhari presidency.”
According to the PDP leader, the body language of the government is worrisome as it emboldens terrorists in the country.
He said the greater worry for the country, however, is the “do-nothing posturing and the effeminate reactions of the Presidency and the military that follow the dastardly attacks.”
Chinda had said it was disheartening to the caucus that the President has failed to lead Nigerians from the front as he promised.
However, Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu, in reaction to Chinda, dismissed the call as an opinion of a member of the opposition.
Kalu, in a statement titled ‘Re: Nigeria saddled with the circus…Hon Kingsley Chinda and his lone voyage of impeachment call,’ said the opinion “does not represent the weakest opinion of the minority caucus of the 9th House”.
He said, “Even among the minority caucus, Hon Kingsley Chinda lost the opportunity to speak for the entire minority when he lost the minority leadership election to Ndudi Elumelu, the Minority Leader of the 9th Assembly, a wound that has refused to heal.
“It is the structure of the minority caucus leadership and majority caucus leadership that is recognised by the House, as any statement not emanating from these and the spokesperson of the House does not in any way reflect either the minority, majority or general position of the 9th House of Representatives and should be disregarded like his other divisive, distracting, destabilising and destructive positions.”
Kalu, therefore, assured Nigerians that having asked the parliament to invite the President, which they have done, they should be patient to wait for the outcome of the meeting “before been misled by a lone voice on the frolic of his own, whose private opinion in no way represents the position of the House of Representatives.”
