Agboola's Suspension: Kwara Former Speaker, Dr. Ali Ahmad, reacts
Ali Ahmad expressed shock at the laughable manner in which Hon. Agbo was suspended. “How do you lock the stable when the horse has bolted? How do you embarrass yourselves by suspending an elected member without the benefit of fair hearing and then turn around and ask him to face an investigation?
If you pardon unfamiliarity with the House rules, can you do so with unfamiliarity with the Constitution? Suspension is the worst his colleagues could impose for they lack power to expel him.”
Dr. Ahmad, who also represented Ilorin South Constituency during the 8th Assembly, decried the lack of pretence even at mimicking due process in this regard. He admonished that the legislature is a house of records but that the current members have failed to learn from rich precedent that successive honourable members both from ruling or opposition parties have laboured to institutionalise in the Assembly.
Hon. Dr. Ahmad recalled how the 8th Assembly resisted political pressure to suspend a lone opposition member and even went ahead to install that member as a Committee Chairman.
“My prayers”, Dr. Ahmad continued, “is that incoming legislators who will be members of the Tenth Assembly of the nationally-respected Kwara State House of Assembly will blot out and consign these curious, unconstitutional and extra-parliamentary practices from the rich history of sterling legislative precedents for which Kwara is known.”
He finally urged Kwarans, especially the good people of Ilorin South Constituency, to continue to remain calm while this illegality is either reversed voluntarily or upturned through the superior force of law.
Signed:
Gen/Sec FOAA for
Rt Hon. Dr. Ali Ahmad