Following the appointment of Femi Gbajabiamila as House Majority Leader, indications have emerged that President Muhammadu Buhari might have influenced the process.
House Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, on Tuesday, July 28, gave in to pressures from his All Progressives Congress, APC, and named Rep. Femi Gbajabiamila House Majority Leader.
Following this move, an end might have finally come to the protracted crisis that has trailed the chamber since its inauguration last June.
Among those who put pressure on the Speaker, Vanguard gathered yesterday, was President Muhammadu Buhari who reportedly put in a phone call to Dogara following a last-minute meeting with party leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
However, Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, denied knowledge of any interaction between the President and the Speaker prior to yesterday’s pronouncement.
The announcement of Gbajabiamila as House Leader was a departure from the earlier stance of the Speaker that doing so would violate the spirit of federal character given that Gbajabiamila is from the South-West which had already filled the position of Deputy Speaker.
The development left the South-East as the only geopolitical zone not to have a representative in the APC’s complement of principal officers.