Gbajabiamila made the House Leader

Party supremacy advocates yesterday carried the day, with Femi Gbajabiamila becoming the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.

The sharing of offices in the House had been contentious. It all ended peacefully as Speaker Yakubu Dogara announced Gbajabiamila the Majority Leader in deference to President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Dogara, by accepting the party’s list, opted for peace than a prolonged crisis in the House. But, instead of riding his colleagues roughshod, Dogara allowed the caucuses of the APC to have input in the choice of principal officers.

Six factors accounted for the resolution of the crisis in the House, it was learnt.

A member of the House listed the factors as follows:

• the Buhari 20-minute intervention on Monday night;
• follow-up intervention by the party leadership after the session with Buhari;
• Dogara’s design of a consensus formula;
• the need to compensate Gbajabiamila for his role as opposition leader in the House for eight years and in  making APC a reality;
• Reps were crisis-weary; and
• the need to save the nation’s democracy because the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was trying to capitalise on the crisis to derail Buhari’s administration.

A source said: “Dogara and APC members were moved by Buhari’s 20-minute appeal. We saw a President who was wearied that we were not united and Dogara seized the moment. He abandoned all prejudices to put the nation and the survival of APC first.

“I think Dogara has tremendous respect for Buhari and he decided to be his own man to defer to the President and APC. He kept on asking, without the party, would I have been here? What is so difficult that we cannot resolve?

“That meeting at the Presidential Villa changed the mood of the warring factions in the House.”

It was also gathered that Dogara was moved by the APC Chairman John Odidie-Oyegun and APC Follow-up Committee. He could not fathom why the elderly ones were begging him, it was learnt.