sing the penultimate week edition of ‘NTA Tuesday Live’, the Nigerian Television Authority talk-show, as barometer to feel the pulse of the nation, it was evidently clear that the stand of the All Progressives Congress on the election of the leadership of the ninth National Assembly, due to be inaugurated in the first week of June, may not be popular after all.
“The party is not a trade union that Oshiomhole may be thinking he is leading. It is like he is comparing the party to a union but they are totally different. You can’t force a candidate on the rest. Why not lobby, beg and negotiate until a consensus is reached? With the way he is going about it, I won’t be surprised if the minority hijacks the process to become the majority.
“By doing that, you don’t encourage the growth we want in our democracy and, by extension, you don’t encourage the members to form their caucuses and develop their eventual leaders for the National Assembly,” he continued. “The day there is total harmony between the executive and the legislature, the ordinary people have been sold. So it is important that the leadership of parliament emerges through the stamp and authority of the lawmakers themselves in addition to the party overseeing the process.