Your removal is legal, Ekiti ‘speaker’ tells Omirin

The Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly, Dele Olugbemi, has said there is no illegality in last week’s removal of Dr. Adewale Omirin as the Speaker of the assembly. Olugbemi, who stated this in Ado-Ekiti on Thursday through his media aide, Mr. Femi Idoko, also said that the claim by the All Progressives Congress legislators that Governor Ayodele Fayose wanted to turn them to house boys was frivolous. He was reacting to the visit of the APC lawmakers to the Speaker of Osun State House of Assembly, Mr. Najeem Salam, where they described Omirin’s removal as illegal. Olugbemi said, “It is baffling that honourable members can start going about peddling falsehood. For the purpose of setting the records straight, the Ekiti State House of Assembly constitutionally and legally sat last Thursday and removed Omirin and elected a new set of leaders. “Our APC colleagues also lied by saying that Governor Ayo Fayose is behaving like an authoritarian leader in his dealings with them. The governor held a series of meetings with the members of the EKHA and I was privy to those meetings. “The governor nearly prostrated for us in some of the meetings, begging us on the need to put Ekiti State first in our considerations. Surprisingly, anytime we agreed to work for the growth of the state, our APC colleagues would change their minds when they got out of the venue. They are being tele-guided by their leaders in Lagos and Abuja. “To the APC lawmakers, Ekiti is not their first priority; their own first priority is APC. They are the ones who do not want the progress of the state. They are hell-bent on seeking vengeance for the defeat of their party in the June 21 governorship poll. “For us in the PDP, it is Ekiti first. But for them in the APC, it is the APC first. We cannot allow anybody or group to hold the state down and be a stumbling block to the progress of our dear state,” he said. Olugbemi advised the APC lawmakers to come back to Ekiti State and perform the constitutional roles they were elected for. He advised Omirin to note that he would be coming back to be a member of the assembly, not the Speaker, as the suit Omirin filed about his removal had not been determined.