The Majority Leader of the Benue State House of Assembly, Saater Tiseer, has raised the alarm over the crisis rocking the All Progressive Congress, APC, in the state, saying it has factionalised the state Assembly. He however noted he could not confirm if the House was divided along the lines of the pro-Akume and pro-Alia factions.
The Majority Leader who spoke yesterday in Makurdi against the backdrop of the recent three months suspension slammed on four members of the Assembly who are leaders of the Group of 22 or G22 in the Assembly, insisted that the House was not in crisis
According to the Majority Leader: “The House is divided but I do not know whether it is between Senator Akume and the Governor. It is divided because there was a contest on who should be the Speaker and one person emerged that had 17 votes and the other 15 votes.
The 17 votes of the speaker were cut across the APC and the PDP, it was an alliance. On the other hand, out of the 15 votes, 14 are APC, one is Labour Party. So from the APC sometimes they feel disgruntled but nobody is being victimized. They feel that we have collaborated with the PDP to form the leadership and that is why there is tension in the House. For those supporting the Speaker, we believe if he gets the right support and supports the Governor, the state will move forward.”
On the distributed official vehicles to members that had generated heat in the House, he said: “That is true, we were supposed to be given vehicles, and we are 31 because one of us Dr. Ortese was appointed Commissioner for Health.
What is supposed to happen is the leaders of the house were supposed to get more than one car. We are supposed to get two and the Speaker two and other security vehicles. The Governor ordered for 32 and the contractor was able to bring 17.
By last week, the Governor attempted to terminate the contract and asked us to go to the banks to get vehicles.
But the contractor assured the governor that we would get them this week and so he asked us to go and share the available cars. And when you are looking at how best to share the vehicles, you are looking at your support base and how you can manage the crisis that will come up.”