Cross River Assembly Info Committee Chair, Mathew Olory Snubs Dialogue Program, Orders Music To Be Played

By CrossRiverWatch Admin

The Chairman of the Cross River State House of Assembly committee on information, Honorable Matthew Olory Sunday turned down at the last minute, an invitation to discuss legislative openness at the sub-national level ordering music to be played much to the chagrin of his co-guest.

Olory who is better known as ‘No Shaking’ was scheduled to appear on ‘The Dialogue With Agba Jalingo’ a weekly radio program on HIT 95.9 FM Calabar on Sunday alongside civil rights activist Tijah Bolton- Akpan to discuss the topic: “Strengthening Legislative Openness At The Sub-National Level; Cross River House of Assembly in Focus” when he developed cold feet and when called by the producers allegedly said that; “Is it not Hit FM? Just play music”.

Tijah who was irked by the comments when made public by the host of the show, Agba Jalingo who disclosed that Olory had also said he was not feeling fine chided the act, pointing out that Olory did not take the  engagement as “really important” probably because he thought whatever information he gave to the citizens before now was sufficient.

According to him, “The parliament has the direct responsibility to represent the people of its constituency”.

He said that the Chairman should have given the platform sufficient notice by virtue of his responsibility in the House of Assembly in charge of information dissemination and wished that such should not repeat itself in the future.

Reacting to the issues of the day, Tija lamented that the 8th Assembly actually came up with an agenda tagged “Citizenship Legislative Agenda Project, CLAP” to facilitate a two way engagement and strengthening feedback, but, “Unfortunately we have not seen very much of this happening in terms of the management of the economy” he decried.

Also, Tijah who is the head of programs at Policy Alert, a civil society organization said the tag “committee on information is actually a misnomer”, suggesting it should be known as the House Committee on citizens engagement or stakeholders engagement.