Nigerian lawmaker ,Bethel Amadi has been elected as president of Pan African Parliament.The election was held yesterday and he was sworn in by the outgoing president Dr Idris Monssa Ndele
“I stand before you today emboldened by our shared determination for unity and inspired by our collective aspiration for continental solidarity, and I declare to you that as President of the Pan African Parliament I shall speak one language, the language of Pan Africanism. One Africa, One Voice,” Nigerian lawmaker Bethel Amadi told a chamber filled with ecstatic members with their hands thrust in the air. Immediately after Bethel Amadi was sworn in by out going President Dr Idris Monssa Ndele.Immediately, he took up his duties and presided over the vice presidential elections of the bureau.
Bethel Amadi’s victory in parliamentary elections for the President of the Pan African parliament may have sown the seeds of something far more significant for Africa and specifically for Nigeria. “We can overcome the superficial divisions and boundaries of our colonial past and current neocolonial attempts to divide us into Arabic speaking,francophone, Luxophone, Anglophone or any other phone for that matter” Amadi said in a brief victory speech after he ran for president of the Pan African Parliament unopposed. In the last minutes to the elections the presidential candidate from Tunisia withdrew his candidacy. However in line with the rules of procedure, an election took place were he won 141 votes to 22.
Amadi’s leadership comes at a critical time, during a period that is rife with unconstitutional changes of government, and political, social instability leading to civil wars on the continent. In order to solve its own problems, the Pan African Parliament is in the transformation into an organ with legislative powers . As a higher ranking member of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and having served since May 2009 as the First Vice President of the Pan African Parliament in charge of legislative duties, Amadi has the knowledge and experience required to lead the Pan African Parliament to success.
