DAY LASUN YUSUF WAS DISGRACED BY HIS COLLEAGUES
In the House of Representatives, it is rare for a presiding officer (Speaker or Deputy Speaker) to come up with a motion that would fail to receive the support of members, whether the motion is popular or not.
Members, most times, pass the speaker or deputy speaker’s motions just to reassure the presiding officers that they (members) are still loyal to them.
But, last Tuesday, members bluntly opposed a motion proposed by the Deputy Speaker, Mr. Yussuff Lasun, to his surprise. It took a diplomatic intervention by the Speaker, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, to save him from being disgraced.
Lasun had, after a substantive motion on the killings in Southern Kaduna, had been debated and passed, raised a new motion as an addendum. He proposed that the House should create a new committee on crisis detection and management in the country.
But, members, led by the Chairman, House Committee on Rules/Business Mr. Orker Jev, kicked against the ‘strange’ idea, not only for being an attempt to revisit a matter already decided by the House, but also that the House had standing committees saddled with such responsibilities.
Lasun’s explanation that his proposed committee would liaise with trouble spots and report to the leadership fell on deaf ears. He was bent on having the motion put to vote.
However, reading the mood of members and sensing that the motion would ‘die’ if he called for a vote from members, Dogara diplomatically advised his deputy to further discuss it with Orker Jev, with a view to reconciling whether there was a provision in the rules of the House to accommodate it!
It was therefore, a narrow escape for the deputy speaker.
