Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, yesterday, said the House had no personal interest in taking over the legislative duties of Rivers State House of Assembly at the peak of the assembly’s crisis this year.
He explained that the decision to take over the crisis-stricken assembly was taken in consultation with the Senate, pointing out that the action was a patriotic intervention to rescue the assembly and by extension, the nation’s democracy, from collapsing.
Tambuwal who spoke when 23 members of the Assembly paid him a courtesy visit in his office at the National Assembly complex, Abuja, further noted that the patriotism of members of the House usually made them to jettison their individual differences while considering critical national issues.
The Speaker, however, said that though the matter of the Rivers Assembly crisis was still pending in the courts, the National Assembly would not relent until the issue was amicably resolved and peace returned to the state.
“I was out of the country when the crisis in Rivers State started. It was my deputy and my own brother, Emeka Ihedioha, that presided over the session that day. But the House rose to the occasion in order to rescue our democracy from collapse,” Tambuwal said.