Failure to achieve a consensus among members-elect of the Adamawa State House of Assembly on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may cause the party its right to produce the speaker of the 7th session of the house scheduled for inauguration on (today) Wednesday, June 13.
The PDP, which has 13 members-elect will be in a slight majority over the All Progressives Congress (APC), which has 11 members-elect, and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) which has one.
The PDP should, therefore, produce the speaker and other principal officers, but the party had four contenders who by press time on Tuesday, according to an inside source, were yet to agree to a consensus, unlike the APC which had narrowed the number of contenders in its fold to one.
The Speaker before last week when the House officially closed its 6th Session, Rt Hon Kabir Mijinyawa of the APC, is now APC’s sole aspirant to the position of speaker of the 7th Assembly, meaning that he is reasonably assured of the votes of himself and 10 other APC colleagues, unlike PDP’s four contenders who will divide the party’s 13 members in tiny sets.
The four PDP contenders: Hon Simon Isa from Song constituency, Aminu Abbas (Uba Gaya), Sajo Hamidu (Yola North) and Joseph Kwada (Michika) were up to press time said to be each striving and insisting on contesting for the job.
“This inability to achieve a consensus among the PDP members is dangerous for the party”, a source in the party noted, but said efforts were still on for influential non-member of the House to make the PDP stand as one.
“I understand that Governor Ahmadu Fintiri himself is in the picture and may meet with the contending forces sometime later today (June 13),” the source said.
The source added that if the PDP fails to pick a consensus choice, the APC “which is watching with keen interest, will grab the position of speaker.”
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