Gbajabiamila To Report Service Chiefs To President For Disrespect

Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila, on Friday in Abuja, vowed to report the nation’s service chiefs to President Muhammadu Buhari after all senior service chiefs failed to honour a summons to brief the leadership of the House on the security situation in the country.

The speaker while calling off the meeting said that the representatives sent by the Service Chiefs were not acceptable to the leadership of the house.

He said that there was no call placed to his office to explain their absence, saying, “I am just seeing their accountants and representatives”.

According to him, this meeting was not called by a committee of the house, it was called by the highest level of the legislature, personally by me as the speaker of the house.

He said: “Let me say that as a house and institution, I cannot under state our disappointment at the Service Chiefs that are not here.

“We wanted to hear from the Service Chiefs, to know what is going on, to know how the house can help. What are the problems, what are the challenges, to talk about strategy and what we need to do.

“I am sure you do not expect the house to fold its arms over what is going on in Maiduguri and other parts of the country.”

He described the absence of the Service Chiefs at the meeting as a show of disdain for the legislature.

“Here we are, we call this the Armed Forces coordinates by Chief of Defence Staff who is not here, Service Chiefs being represented by their accountants.

“I am actually at a loss on the absence of the Service Chiefs.

“I know one or two of these Service Chiefs were somewhere yesterday night, I can almost say that it showed the disdain for this institution,” Gbajabiamila said.

Gbajabimila said that it was not done anywhere in the world for Service Chiefs not to honour the leadership of parliament.

The speaker said that he would take the matter up with President Buhari and postponed the meeting to Monday.

He said: “I am not sure how to handle this, I do not think this happens anywhere, any parliament in the world, where the head of parliament will call the Service Chiefs for a nagging problem on how to resolve it and will not show.

“I think it is important to postpone this meeting to Monday morning, I will personally see the president myself, because we are suppose to work as one, to work together as a body.”

Also speaking, the Deputy Speaker of the house, Ahmed Wase in strong terms, condemned the action of the Service Chiefs for not appearing for the meeting.

“I am insulted and I feel insulted that the leadership would make a pronouncement and say ‘come, let us discuss the problem that is affecting our country’ but the same people who are in charge of security, coordinating it; the active officers who are supposed to be on the field are not here.”

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