Ekiti State Sacked House of Assembly Speaker, Olugboyega Aribisogan, has petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, Usman Baba, alleging a security threat to him and his family members, as well as two of his allies, Messrs Tajudeen Akingbolu and Olajide Adegoke.
Aribisogan said he had relocated his family and gone underground since some strange men were sighted around his home and office.
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After Aribisogan was removed from office on November 21, 2022, the Assembly suspended Akingbolu, Adegoke and some members loyal to the ex-Speaker indefinitely.
Aribisogan, in a petition to the IGP, dated December 7, 2022, and titled ‘Save My Soul: Appeal for Police Protection,’ insisted that his impeachment was illegal.
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The petition read partly:
I hereby appeal to the Inspector-General to save me and my family members from being eliminated because I decided to contest for election as the Speaker of the Ekiti State House of Assembly. On November 15, 2022, 25 members of the House of Assembly participated in a free, fair, and transparent election of a new Speaker to fill the vacancy, which occurred due to the death of the late Speaker of the House, Funminiyi Afuye.
I must mention that for some days before the election, some powerful forces outside the government of Ekiti State had been coercing members of the House to support Adelugba for the Speakership. My emergence as the Speaker thus did not go down well with those people, and they used their influence to get heavily armed policemen to be drafted to seal off the House of Assembly Complex in the early hours of the following day (Wednesday, November 16, 2022), after I was elected Speaker.
On enquiry, the State Commissioner of Police told me that he deployed his men to secure the complex based on an alleged intelligence report that some disgruntled elements had planted a bomb on the premises. The Police Commissioner said that I should inform the honourable members and staff of the Assembly to vacate the premises for a few hours while he searched the premises.
He added that on November 20, 2022, he received information that those who were not pleased with his emergence as the Speaker of the House, called a few lawmakers members and threatened to deal with them if they did not follow them to an all-night meeting that day.
He said the members, who were camped overnight outside Ado-Ekiti, were moved to the House of Assembly at 6am on November 21, 2022.
He added:
The members claimed that they had a plenary meeting, during which I was purportedly impeached as Speaker and suspended from the House along with six other colleagues.
Aribisogan stated that since the meeting was not legally convened and his purported impeachment and suspension did not follow due process, he and his two colleagues who nominated him for the speakership election approached the Ado Ekiti High Court to “nullify the illegal decisions taken by the House of Assembly.”
The ex-Speaker said immediately after he announced his decision to go to court on November 17, “three unknown men visited my private office and my residence to make enquiries about my whereabouts.”
