Tambuwal is the Governor-elect for Sokoto State under the platform of the APC and will be sworn in as governor on May 29. He decided to transfer power to Ihedioha ahead of May 29 handover date to avoid a possible constitutional crisis of taking oath of office for two separate offices.
Although Tambuwal will be sworn in as governor on May 29, his current tenure as a member of the House will terminate on June 6. Tambuwal spoke with journalists after Tuesday's sitting of the House.
He explained that members of the House agreed at an executive session that Ihedioha should preside over the affairs of the House till June 6.
"My stay here in the House would have effectively come to an end on May 29 after I would have been inaugurated as governor.
"We have to avoid any possible issues on this, since the constitution is silent on what happens when a sitting Speaker has to move to another office," he said. He added that the 1999 Constitution does not envisage a situation where the Speaker will leave one office for another, while the oath taken for the current one is subsisting.
"At our executive session, a member came up with an ingenious way of dealing with the matter on hand, which members accepted. "He came up with the idea that the portion of the House rules in question should be suspended to enable the deputy speaker to continue to preside over the House instead of electing a new Speaker," Tambuwal said.
Tambuwal added that the other alternative would have been to shut down the House before June 6, but said he was not in support of such a move. "I won't shut down the House. The House can sit tomorrow ( today), Thursday and possibly the other sitting days of next week," he said.
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