DEPUTY Speaker of the House of Represen-tatives, Hon. Yusuf Lasun may have been pressured by his State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, to resign his position to foster peace in the Green chamber.
This idea was said have been discussed at a closed door meeting of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Chief John Oyegun with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Osun State Governor, Rauf Aregbesola and Lasun at the APC national secretariat, yesterday.
It was also the first time such a high profile meeting of the political gladiators would be held since the emergence of Dogara and Lasun as speaker and deputy speaker of the House on June 9.
Both men defiantly went for the House leadership election upon the inauguration of the 8th National Assembly.
APC as a party had through a mock election in Abuja on June 6 endorsed the candidatures of Hon. Femi Gabajabiamila and Hon. Mohammed Mong-unu for the positions. But both were roundly beaten in the election.
The duo also aspired for a place in the principal officers positions of the House later to no avail.
Since then, the House has not known peace and has adjourned two times, but is ready to resume on July 28 to conclude the leadership elections.
Similarly, APC on its part had been rattled amid fruitless efforts to resolve the matter.
One of those efforts, it was
gathered was to get leaders to resign their positions.
But while that of Dogara appeared impossible, it was gathered that unprecedented pressure had been mounted on Lasun. To this end, the APC leadership subtly involved his state governor to prevail on him.
His resignation, it was learned, was to show loyalty to the national leader of the party, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who had apparently been perturbed by the emergence of Doagra and Lasun against Gbajabiamila and Monguno who were “his candidates”.
Asked to speak to Journalists at the end of the meeting, the trio of Aregbesola, Dogara and Lasun who wore straight faces declined to comment on their mission to the party’s secretariat.
But speaking to Journalists later, the national chairman stated that the headship of the House was summoned to the secretariat as part of the ongoing efforts to restore peace before the resumption of the national assembly on Tuesday.
According to him, the party summoned the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker and other APC governors from the South-west.
But of the four APC governors from the South-West, only Aregbesola showed up for the meeting.
Asked to confirm whether or not the party has asked Lasun to step down as part of the new peace deal, both Oyegun and the media aide to Lasun, Mr. Wole Oladimeji, denied knowledge of that.
“No, the party has not said such thing, we only called a meeting with the Speaker, his deputy and South-west governors so as to try and sort out the outstanding issues in the House of Representatives. We are still holding consultations and hopefully there will be a breakthrough soon,” Oyegun said.
Also speaking, Oladimeji said: “It is not true that the deputy speaker is being pressured to resign. Why would he resign? He was duly elected.’’
Saturday Vanguard couldn’t reach Speaker Dogara or his Media Adviser, Mr. Hassan Turaki for comments as their phones were not available at press time.
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