N628 MILLION CONTRACT SCANDAL: PRESSURE ON SPEAKER TO RESIGN

Patricia Olubunmi Etteh

Pressure is currently mounting on the embattled Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh to resign her position over the N628 Million contract scam that has enveloped the house in the last one month.

This is coming on the heels of unconfirmed reports that the controversial contracts was allegedly awarded to one Mrs. Iquo Minima, a former House member who currently works as the Speaker’s Special Adviser on Security Matters who used two companies that were allegedly hurriedly registered to secure the job of renovating the houses of the principal officers.

Pointblanknews.com gathered over the weekend from sources within the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP that the party is particularly worried over the revelations from the public hearing on the issue where National Assembly bureaucrats condemned the methods adopted by the speaker in awarding the contracts.

The party, according to the sources sees the revelations from the National Assembly bureaucrats as not only a dent on the Speaker’s integrity to lead the House of Representatives but also an embarrassment to the new government of Musa Yar’Adua who hitherto pledged to crack down on corruption.

The National Assembly Director of Director of Legal Services had told the hearing that “ I am forced to tell you that what happened is not different from what has been happening at the National Assembly. I must tell you that proper procedure was followed in the meeting. We are all bound by government financial regulations."

The assertions of the Director of Legal Services corroborated with those of others including the Clerk of the National Assembly, Alhaji Nasir Arab who had earlier appeared before the probe panel, making matters worse for the first female Speaker of the House of Representatives.

It was learnt that political friends of the speaker, sensing a bad case had pressured on the management of the National Assembly to frustrate the hearing. The deal failed and the pro-Etteh’s group is now split as some are calling on the Speaker to resign and save herself from the embarrassment of being impeached when the probe committee submits its reports to the house.

“We have a bad case and we have told the speaker to honorably resign instead of facing impeachment because we do not see how she intends to be exonerated from this,” a member of the House who would not want to be named told pointblanknews.com.

The source reasoned that a resignation would save the speaker from being prosecuted saying “if the speaker resigns all this issue would be closed but if she is impeached as a result of the outcome, she might be prosecuted and that would be too bad for her.”

The House of Representatives yesterday had set up a nine man panel toinvestigate the controversial contract allegedly awarded by its leadership for the upgrading of the official residences of speaker of the House, Hon. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh and her deputy, Hon. Babangida Sa’idu Nguroje at the cost of N628 Million.

The committee headed by Hon. David Idoko (PDP, Benue) is to submit its report to the House after 14 days. Other members of the committee are Habeeb Fashinro (AC, Lagos), Nasiru Mohammed (ANPP, FCT), Sani Saleh Minjibir (ANPP, Kano) and Chinedu Eluemuno (PDP, Anambra). The rest are Peter Umoh (PDP, Akwa Ibom), Depo Oyedokun (PDP, Oyo), Yakubu Dogara (PDP, Bauchi), and Rabe Nasir (PDP, Katsina).