10th NASS: Female Rep-elect, Onuoha Seeks Speakership Position 

BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – The race for the Office of Speaker in the coming 10th National Assembly has now attracted the first female contestant with member-elect, Miriam Onuoha, insisting the House of Representatives needs  a service-driven leader who understands citizens’ participation in governance

With her declaration, Onuoha, an All Progressives Congress (APC) member representing Onuimo/Isiala Mbano/Okigwe Federal Constituency in Imo State, becomes the first female to openly throw her hat into the Speakership battle.

Officially making her intentions known at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, Onuoha, in her address titled; ‘The Unity House,’ said the 10th Assembly “promises to be a watershed of some sort for Nigeria’s fledgling democracy.”

According to her, Nigeria at this time needs “a nationalist and a dynamic team player to stem the tide of our dwindling economy and the much-needed dividends to Nigerians – a service-driven leader who understands citizens’ participation.”

She further stated that; “The emergency of the dwindling number of women in parliament calls for deliberate action, an action that will bridge the gender gap; an action that is a call for the leadership of the National Assembly to embrace the stance for a woman of competence and experience.

“I honourably call for my fellow contestants to support me, a woman with competence, integrity and full of vision. No doubt, our President-elect, His Excellency, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is a he-for-she who has always empowered women in all spheres of life, having picked a woman as his running mate as the Governor of Lagos state and supported his amiable wife to become a senator in the parliament, in line with the goals of the UN’s 35 per cent Affirmative Action for women.

“To this effect, my election as the Speaker House of Representatives will, therefore, afford Nigeria the rare opportunity of killing the two ubiquitous birds of gender balancing and youth inclusiveness in its political/leadership landscape, with one stone.”

Flanked at the media conference by two serving male members of the House, Messrs Abdulkadir Abdullahi (APC/Bauchi) and Emeka Chinedu (PDP/Imo) as well as several new members-elect and some members of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Onuoha maintained that she truthfully and amply represents “the twin-engine essence of Nigeria’s youth and female status quo, whom the circumstances of our political exigencies have made an endangered and vulnerable species”.

Similarly, the lawmaker, who is re-elected for a second term to the House, explained that the issue of regional balancing in the nation’s leadership equation is also “another veritable national challenge that my election to the speakership of the House of Representatives will address and resolve simultaneously in the interest of national unity, peace and inclusion.”

For now, she is the second member from the South-East geopolitical zone to join the race, after Benjamin Kalu from Abia State who currently sits as Chairman of the House Committee on Media and Public Affairs.

So far, the list of those aspiring to occupy the Speakership position in the 10th Assembly has continued to increase by the day, though some of them are yet to officially declare their intentions.

According to insider sources within the APC and the Green chamber, about 10 names are featuring prominently among those interested in the race to become the next Speaker and these include the current Deputy Speaker, Ahmed Wase; embattled Majority Leader, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa; Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Benjamin Kalu; Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Land Transport, Tajudeen Abbas; and Chairman, House Committee on Appropriation, Aliyu Betara;

Others are Chairman, House Committee on Water Resources, Sada Soli; Chairman of the House Committee on Navy, Yusuf Gagdi; Chairman, House Committee on Science Research Institutes, Olaide Akinremi; Chairman of the House Committee on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness, Abdulraheem Olawuyi; and Deputy Chairman of the House Committee on Defence, Makki Yalleman.

The insiders further hinted that pressure is mounting for the ruling APC to consider what some lobbyists term as “equitable distribution” of the National Assembly leadership positions among the South-East, North-West, South-South, and North-Central geo-political zones given that the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, comes from the South-West region and the Vice President-elect, Senator Kashim Shettima, is from the North-East zone.