Frontrunner and the All Progressives Congress (APC) anointed candidate for the speakership of the 9th House of Representatives, Hon Femi Gbajiabiamila, yesterday stepped up his campaign for the office as he gathered members-elect from across the political divides in Abuja to sell his manifesto to them.

Apart from unveiling his game plan for the forthcoming election for the principal officers of the National Assembly slated for next month, Gbajiabiamila also lavished the lawmakers-elect with gift items. Before they were given the items, which included smart phones, journalists were excused out of the parley held at the New Chelsea Hotel, Abuja. As they filed out of the venue for a press conference also in the same hotel, the lawmakers-elect clutched the parks containing the phones and posed for separate photographs.

Sources at the closed-door meeting claimed that the members-elect signed the register for the phones and other gift items in an envelope before all was handed to them. The sources declined to give disclose what was in the envelope that each beneficiary received.

The meeting, LEADERSHIP Friday further learnt, was presided over by Gbajabiamila, who hinted that he currently enjoys the support of 178 reps-elect from all the major political parties in the House. According to his political associates, the figure is enough for Gbajiabiamila to clinch the speakership of the Lower House during its inauguration in June.

One of the loyalists of the Lagos-born speakership aspirant, Hon Onofiok Luke (PDP, Akwa Ibom), who addressed a press conference after conferring with Gbajiabiamila, said that they opted to support him for the office because of his capacity, openness and experience in the National Assembly. Hon Luke, who is the outgoing speaker of the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly and member-elect for the incoming House of Representatives, said that all the 178-members-elect rooting for Gbajiabiamila attended the meeting and resolved to adopt him for the office because “he is a non-sectional lawmaker.”

Hon Luke said: “This is a conglomeration of people of different parties. I am of the PDP, we have members of APC here, and we have members of APGA and we have people from AA. We have others from the SDP and from the ADC. It’s a multi-party arrangement.

“We decided to convene ourselves as newly-elected members of the National Assembly because we have acknowledged the fact that because of the challenges that we have, we need a bi-partisan approach to solving them and the only person that shows that credibility, capacity, and all it takes even as reflected in his manifesto to carry the entire parties along, is Hon Femi Gbajiabiamila.

“The man will not mortgage the independence of the legislature and will at the same time not engage the executive in a fiasco; he is a man who will build a good relationship between the executive and the legislature, and between the legislature and the judiciary.

“Hon Gbajiabiamila is a leader who will care about the welfare of all Nigerians; he is a man who will put the interest of Nigerians above his personal goals. He will also put the interest of Nigeria above the party.”

The PDP lawmaker further disclosed that “we have resolved today by coming from our different constituencies and as newly-elected members having looked through the credentials of the contenders, have found in Hon Femi Gbajabiamila a man who has the capacity to be the speaker of House of Representatives in the 9th National Assembly.”

“We know that he is not going to let Nigerians down, we believe that he is not going to let us down and will also not let God down,” Luke said. (LEADERSHIP)