Nasarawa Assembly crisis: Ogazi, Balarabe factions fail to reach agreement

By Naomi Sharang

Efforts to end the battle for speakership of Nasarawa House of Assembly between Daniel Ogazi and Ibrahim Balarabe failed on Wednesday as both factions could not reach a truce after a meeting that lasted for than three hours at the State Government Lodge in Abuja.

The two factions have been in battle over who leads the assembly as the 7th Speaker.

The lawmakers left the venue disappointed even as Gov. Abdullahi Sule arrived and waited for their resolution.

The two factional speakers declined speaking to newsmen who were waiting patiently for the outcome of the meeting.

However, Ogazi send a text message that the meeting ended in a deadlock and expressed hope that they will meet again while all efforts to hear from Balarabe was unfruitful.

Last week, the governor met with the twenty four lawmakers and pleaded with them to resolve the leadership impasse and report back to him in two days.

The leadership crisis rocking the state assembly took another dimension on 8 June, as the 13 factional members during plenary passed a resolution suspending the 10 other factional members.

As a result of having two factional speakers of the state assembly, the inauguration of the 7th Assembly was postponed.

After the postponement, leadership crisis erupted where two speakers emerged with Balarabe and Ogazi leading different groups.

While Balarabe was elected at a sitting in the Ministry for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the state by 11 out of 24 members, Ogazi was elected by 13 out of 24 members at plenary at the State Assembly complex.

As the crisis escalated, the state’s APC led by its Chairman, John Mamman on June 9 endorsed Balarabe as the Speaker for the State 7th Assembly.

Not relenting, on June 10, Ogazi went to a Federal High Court in Lafia seeking to stop Balarabe and Mr Jacob Kudu from parading themselves as speaker and deputy speaker of 7th Assembly among other requests.