Legislators Lead March For Wike

Legislative proceedings continued in the House last week as the lawmakers sat to deliberate on State matters. It finally passed the Rivers State Assembly Service bill of 2018 into law.
During last Tuesday deliberations, majority of the lawmakers who voted in support of the bill stood for the view that the Office of the Clerk of the House be thrown open to those who are qualified to aspire.
According to them, the bill is to ensure that employees are to grow and contest for the office of the Clerk, but that does not stop others outside who aspire to be clerk to also seek appointment.
Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Ikuinyi-Owaji Ibani said of the bill, “It’s our belief that every qualified staff of the Assembly should have a chance to contest or be appointed the Clerk”.
Before the passage of the bill last week, some members of the House, including members representing Obio/Akpor II, Hon. Michael Chinda has recommended a succession plan that will take into consideration the complexities involved in legislative process.
According o Hon. Chinda,the succession plan should stipulate the process of engaging the Clerk of the House. The Obio/Akpor Constituency II lawmaker insisted that possible successors to the office should be trained, at least for six months.
The argument put up by Hon. Chinda stems from the view that the legislature has a process and rule and therefore the office of the Clerk should be studied in the legislative process.
The view of Chinda was supported by Hon. Christian Ahiakwo representing Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area I, who held that the office of clerk should be re-engineered such that those who fill the position are well trained in legislative process.
Also last week, two legislators championing the ‘One Million Youth for Wike 2019′, Hon. Edison Ehie, and Hon. Major of Akuku-Toru led thousands of youths in Port Harcourt and Obio/Akpor on a sensitisation street-to-street parade to compel the State Governor to contest for 2019 elections.
However, penultimate week, Hon. Ahiakwo addressed protesters on the “End the Soot” campaign at the premises of the Assembly called on the federal government to intervene.
Ahiakwo who heads the House Committee on Environment stood in for the Speaker, saying that the soot problem was as a result of poor federal government attention to needs of the Niger Delta.
The lawmaker representing Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Constituency I said, “We cannot stop the soot when these issues are not brought to the fore. Money too should be borrowed to tackle the environmental problem in Nigeria”
Ahiakwo likened the neglect of Niger Delta and Rivers State by the Federal government as environmental terrorism.