Melaye set to resume plenary
By After about one month in police detention, the embattled Chairman Senate Committee on FCT, Dino Melaye, is set to resume plenary.
The lawmaker who represents Kogi West Senatorial District and was in police custody at the National Hospital Abuja, was granted bail last week by a Lokoja High Court, having been arrested and detained by the police since April 24, 2018 on charges of gun running.
But in a message on Monday, the controversial All Progressives Congress (APC) senator said he would continue to speak the truth.
In a statement titled: ‘Thank you Nigerians’, Melaye said he would continue to speak the truth, no matter whose ox is gored.
“To my people, I promise you this and this only. I have taken my position, I will not hold back, I will not hold my peace, I will not be shut down, neither will I shut-up, not as long as injustice and falsehood continues to reign, as long as I will live, I will not bow to Baal,” the statement personally signed by the senator reads.
He commended his immediate constituency; Senate President Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; federal lawmakers; Kogi State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); lawyers; leaders of the diplomatic corps as well as religious groups who stood by him during his ordeal.
“I know many of you worry about my safety and life in this new dispensation where life is no longer sacred in Nigeria. But do not be troubled. My bond of love for you, my good people, makes it impossible for me to consider my self-risk, safety, comfort or opportunity in my unflinching commitment to stand up for you, to stand up for truth and if necessary die for the truth and the emancipation of our people from the chains of poverty and oppression. Though they raise spurious allegations against me, bear false witness against me, though they seek to frighten me and lure me into their bounty of evil, I will fear no foe.
“Yes, my traducers and torturers wish that I keep quiet; though they seek to seal my lips, to silence my voice forever, I remain ever more resolute and committed. I am committed to this cause for which I am a politician; the cause of the down trodden, to speak truth to power and stand against oppression and injustice. On these issues there will be no compromise. I owe no apologies and I tender none.
“Like I have always said, you speak the truth, you die, you don’t speak the truth, you die. I have chosen to speak the truth, dead or alive. Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr., once said, “Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politics? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right,” he added.
Senate resumes plenary on Tuesday, May 22, 2018.
Although the statement was silent on his resumption date, a source close to him revealed that he will definitely resume this week.
According to Melaye, the state unleashed over 200 armed policemen on him. “The state unleashed its raw power on me and released a 200 man-strong fully armed policemen – on a man without a knife nor a bullet. It did this because I called injustice by its name and called for accountability. For this they sought to break my spirit and destroy me permanently. In their moment of reign, I was fully shackled. With my hands tied to my back, and hurled into a dark solitary confinement waiting for the butchers knife, you, my people stood by me. You came against a raging fire and stood up against tyranny, lies, filthy lucre, injustice, persecution and greed. While in the dark and unable to fight for myself, they sought to take my mandate, which you had freely given to me. But you answered back and quenched deceit in its wake. You stood resolute and unflinching and defended your mandate to me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. In their attempt to break me, they have made me stronger”.
The Senate has been on a running battle with his state governor, Yahaya Bello; President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC national leadership.
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