By Levinus Nwabughiogu-Abuja
The member representing Gwer East, Gwer West Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Mark Gbillah and the Tiv nation in Benue State have demanded an apology from the Deputy Speaker of the House, Idris Wase for rejecting their petition against the federal government on the alleged take over of other ancestral lands.
It will be recalled that Gbillah had at plenary on Wednesday presented a petition from the Tiv petition resident in the United States.
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He said: “Mr Speaker, I have a petition from the Mutual Union of Tiv in America against the federal government of Nigeria. And the issue has to do with the ancestral land of the Tiv people that seems to have been possessed in recent times through various attacks and the facts that they are languishing in IDPs camps without any intervention. With your kind permission, Mr Speaker, I want to lay this petition before this honourable House.”
But the petition was not accepted by the presiding officer, Wase who queried the status of the association in the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC of Nigeria.
Wase had reasoned that the people, though Nigerians could not claim to be in the know of the happening as to make an informed decision on the subject matter since they were not living in the country and following the trends of events.
He also countered Gbillah who referred him to section 40 of the 1999 Constitution, saying that some of the people though Nigerians schooling in America had rights under the law.
Gbillah had also stated that the Nigerian Diaspora Commission was established to cater to the citizens living abroad.
“Honourable Gbillah, did you say Tivs in America? If they are in America, could they really be an interested party here? Could they really know exactly what is going on?
“I’ll refer you to the functions of the committee on diaspora, if you go through that, it is nothing relevant to…
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