Newly-elected Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly, Hon, Mrs Elizabeth Ativie has thrown more light into what led to the recent change in the leadership of the House saying that the impeached speaker and his deputy were found wanting of corrupt practices in their financial handling of the House’s affairs
Hon (Mrs) Ativie disclosed that former speaker Hon. Victor Edoro and his deputy Bright Osayande ‘were constantly short-changing members in the almost one year legislative calendar thereby living members to their own fate.’
Ativie who is making history as the first female Speaker of the assembly said: “The former speaker, Hon Victor Edoro just like I said at the chambers, was very corrupt. His highhandedness in managing his colleagues, is one among equals, we were all first elected before electing him to become speaker to the extent that he doesn’t come to the house stipulated by house rules.
“The funniest thing is that he changed the overhead of the House to suit his own ways thereby leaving his colleagues not to be taking care of properly. You journalists can also observe that lawmakers in the Edo Assembly were now living like paupers . I don’t want to go into his reckless spendings.
“One year into office, members cannot feed properly. The most annoying one is that each time members complain, that’s the POC, who are supposed to take care of members, they failed as the leader of the House because the resources were been diverted and not used for what it’s meant for and when asked. The most painful one is that, he will tell us that it is the chief executive that was not releasing the fund and that ignited us to be fighting the executive. This almost led to almost three months of war between the legislators and the executive.
“One day the governor called a meeting of party elders and the House where he told us how he has attended to twelve out of the fourteen items sent to him for consideration which was not denied by the former speaker.
“The moment we establish that there was cheating In the whole process, the members were angered and the more we tried to take care of this, the more revelations we got. Yesterday here, we discovered that certain monies were paid into his private account and I have told the Clerk of the House to write to the auditor general to send us auditors to audit our finances from June last year till May this year.
