Impeachment: You’re Misinformed, Biased, Lawmakers Tell Ekiti SANs

The Ekiti State House of Assembly on Thursday disagreed with the position of some senior lawyers in the state that the speaker elected on Monday, Mrs Olubunmi Adelugba, should vacate the office for Gboyega Aribisogan, who emerged speaker six days earlier.

The lawmakers, who said the opinion of the senior advocates was biased, stated, “For the avoidance of doubt, Rt. Hon. Adelugba remains the validly elected speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly and she enjoys the support of overwhelming majority of the honourable members, party leadership and the government of Ekiti State.”

The SANs from Ekiti State, Aare Afe Babalola, Chief Wole Olanipekun, Dele Adesina, Olu Daramola, Femi Falana, Dayo Akinlaja and Gboyega Oyewole, had in a statement insisted that Aribisogan remained the speaker and that the action of the Adelugba group to impeach him was a nullity.

Reacting, the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Publicity, Adeoye Aribasoye, in a statement, said, “We wish to let the reading public know that members of the Ekiti State House of Assembly feel a sense of injustice by the one-sided opinion and biased intervention of the legal luminaries who are also elder statesmen. The principle of justice all over the world is that all sides to a conflict must be heard and it is only then that justice can be seen to have been done.”

“It is unfortunate that our elder statesmen did not hear from the side of the new speaker and the remaining 16 members who impeached the former speaker, Rt. Hon. Aribisogan and elected Rt. Hon. Adelugba.

“The advice of the legal luminaries that Rt. Hon. Adelugba, who was duly elected by 17 members, should stop parading herself as the speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly is unwarranted and we believe this is based on wrong information by the impeached speaker.

“The House has neither breached any section of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria nor its own standing rules concerning the impeachment of Rt. Hon. Aribisogan and the election of Rt. Hon. Olubunmi Adelugba on Monday, November 21, 2022. Rt. Hon. Aribisogan was duly served an impeachment notice and was thereafter impeached by 2/3rd members of the whole house.”