Na’Abba Hits Back At Northern Governors

A  former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba has dismissed an allegation that northern lawmakers in the National Assembly during the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo may have sold out in passing the onshore/offshore dichotomy abrogation law. He has turned the heat on northern governors instead.   In an exclusive […]

A  former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ghali Umar Na’Abba has dismissed an allegation that northern lawmakers in the National Assembly during the regime of former President Olusegun Obasanjo may have sold out in passing the onshore/offshore dichotomy abrogation law. He has turned the heat on northern governors instead.

 

In an exclusive interview with Sunday Trust in Abuja at the weekend, Na’Abba gave the chronology of events the led to the passage of the law, adding that at that time no northern governor raised a finger in opposition of the law, in spite of the fact that it was ominous to the North.

He said when the bill was being debated, “Nobody called me. In fact, I was the one who wrote letters to all the governor of the northern states because a public hearing was held in which this matter was tabled before the people…The essence of the public hearing was for people to come forward and give their views on the matter. That is the convention for people to know that such a law is coming. But no governor came, the only persons that came were the commissioners of finance of Bauchi and Kano States.

Even Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who is now claiming that he called members from Kano State to speak with them but they sold out, is lying. At that time, he had no rapport with any member of the House form Kano, except one member called M. A. Yufuf Bungure. He was the only person relating with the governor. So the governor wouldn’t have called anybody.”

Explaining his own role, Na’Abba said when the House he presided over passed the bill into law, it inserted elements that made it difficult for Obasanjo to sign it into law. He added that when the former president returned it for further amendment, the House sat on it from three months before its tenure expired. Technically, it is therefore, not true that the onshore/offshore bill was passed into law during his own tenure.

Providing documentary evidence, including the onshore/offshore abrogration Act, the first, second and third reading  other correspondences between his office and Obasanjo, to Sunday Trust, Na’abba argued that the bill was passed into law by the National Assembly in 2004.

He was Speaker of the House from 1999 to 2003.

(Read the full text of the interview on pages 4 and 5)