A political analyst, Mr Wale Ogunade, on Sunday said that loyal party members should be considered for appointments into the National Assembly leadership and other committees.
Ogunade, also the President, Voters Awareness Initiative, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
According to him, appointing members based on their loyalty to the party is one of the ways the 9th Assembly can perform better than the previous ones.
“What is going on at the National Assembly is a very bad precedence set by Sen. Bukola Saraki in 2015 and I hope the wise ones among the legislators will not follow such example.
“All the members of the NASS came on a platform of a party and there is what we call ‘party supremacy’.
“If a political party fights and win an election and there are positions to be occupied, the party has the right to determine who gets what position. That to me is not an act of imposition as people are calling it.
“These people have been elected on the platform of the party and the party knows that if the wrong person gets the leadership positions, they may disrupt the progress of the party,” he said.
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“And I’m sure the party will not forget in a hurry, their experience in 2015 with Saraki and Dogara.
“These people were members of the APC in name, but PDP members in soul, thus not full-fledged APC members. And they really frustrated the activities of the government.
“So the party needs to put its house in order to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2015.
“Rather than imposition, it’s about party loyalty. Those that are loyal to the party should be given leadership positions in the parliament.”
Ogunade added: “Loyalty matters in situations like this because these are offices and positions that you need people who really believe in the party, not those who will go and form alliances with opposition in order to win.
“Once that happens, their loyalty is divided and they will become a clog in the wheel of good governance.
“So, the party has a right to determine the leaders of NASS so that they can work in synergy with the executive arm of government to deliver the dividends of democracy,” he said. (NAN)
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