With reports circling round that the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) is providing security for the Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, the leader, Dr Fredrick Fasheun has denied that the socio-cultural group is doing that.
It was said late last week that OPC had dispatched about 60 of its men to provide protection for Tambuwal after police authorities withdrew his security detail, following his defection from Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC).
Dr. Fredrick Fasheun in a press statement said there were no ways the group could be providing security for the Speaker because he had usurped the position originally zoned to the South-west, saying that “OPC is a socio-cultural organisation dedicated to protecting and pushing the interest of the Yoruba people who dominate the South-West”
The organisation recalled that it had raised a voice of protest when in June 2011, Tambuwal mounted the seat of Speaker, a position originally zoned to the South-west by the ruling PDP describing him as “an usurper who hijacked the position since 2011, and should immediately cede the post to a Yoruba legislator in the lower chamber.
“Back in 2011, we told Tambuwal that he was a usurper of a seat reserved for the Yoruba, and asked him to vacate the position. But he refused. No way can we now extend any form of assistance to him,” the statement said.
“And we still maintain our stand that Tambuwal should hand over the position of Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives to the Yoruba people, who have an authentic claim to the position.”
According to the OPC President, but for the maturity and restraint displayed by the South-west, Tambuwal’s occupation of the position would have created acute political crisis in the federation, as it did not only violate the Federal Character principle enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution, but amounted to a slap to the Yoruba people.
He said that with the Yoruba robbed of the Speakership, it meant that the South-west region had been shut out of the country’s power equation, as the South-south produced the President, the North produced the Vice-President, the Senate President and the Deputy Speaker came from the South-east as well as the Secretary to the Federal Government, while the South-west had nothing.
“OPC and Yoruba people believe this is the time to right the wrong of the last three years, by letting the post of Speaker devolve back to its rightful owners, the South-west,” he said.
“And we have Yoruba sons and daughters in the lower chamber and quite capable of discharging that responsibility,” Fasheun stressed.
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