By Austin Ogwuda
DELTA State House of Assembly Speaker, Rt. Hon Dennis Guwor has personally spoken since the controversial circumstances leading to the suspension one of members of House, Mr. Matthew Omonade.
The Speaker spoke at a press conference marking the celebration of the First Anniversary of the 8th Assembly on Tuesday.
Said he, “It is very very unfortunate that a member was suspended; that is not our prayer. In life certain things happen.
“The truth is that there is a Committee set up to investigate. I don’t want to preempt the outcome of it.
However, Laws are universal, Laws are not books. Books are plagarised, Laws are not plagarised”, the Speaker stated.
There is this raging controversy about a private member Bill allegedly sponsored by Matthew Omonade only to be hijacked as an Executive Bill.
The suspended Member representing Ughelli North 1 Constituency in the Delta State House of Assembly, Matthew Omonade whose fate ought to have been decided since last week Tuesday following the one week deadline handed over to the Committee set up to investigate the matter.
But due to the ongoing strike action by the Assembly workers who padlocked the gates leading to the Assembly complex, the House was not able to reconvene last week Tuesday as scheduled.
The 5-man Ad-hoc Committee was set up to investigate the alleged gross misconduct is headed by the Majority Leader, Emeka Nwaobi.
Other members include the Chief Whip, Perkins Umukoro, the Deputy Chief Whip, Fred Martins, Minority Whip, Alapala Ebitonmo and the member representing Ika North East, Marylyn Okowa-Daramola, while the Deputy Clerk (Legislative), Mr D. S. Olorogun is to serve as Secretary of the Committee.
The bone of contention centred on the issue of a Bill on Generation and Distribution of Electricity to be domesticated in Delta State.
It was learnt that Omonade allegedly carried out extensive research work on the Bill and after working on it he passed a copy to Mr Speaker who subsequently forwarded same to the governor, according to inside sources.
Unfortunately, when Omonade kept on asking the Speaker for the Bill to be presented, the Speaker was reported to have declined only for the Bill to return to the House as an Executive Bill without crediting him regards the intellectual property.
