Nigeria's House of Representatives descended into a rowdy session on Thursday after a lawmaker publicly disowned a document that listed him among those who endorsed Ikenga Ugochinyere as the chamber's new Minority Leader. According to Channels Television, the dispute erupted during plenary in Abuja and quickly overshadowed other legislative business, laying bare deep divisions within the opposition bloc over who should lead the minority caucus.
At the centre of the controversy is Philip Agbese, the Deputy Spokesperson of the House and a lawmaker from Benue State, who told colleagues that his signature had been forged on the endorsement list. Raising a point of privilege on the floor, Agbese insisted that the use of his name and signature amounted to forgery and a clear breach of his legislative privilege, and he demanded that the matter be properly investigated by the House.
The row stems from reports that 61 members of the Minority Caucus had appended their signatures to a document nominating Ugochinyere, a member of the Action People's Party, for the position of Minority Leader. Agbese said he became aware of the list only on Wednesday evening, when it surfaced online with his name among the lawmakers who had supposedly backed Ugochinyere's bid for the influential leadership post.
Speaking during the heated session, Agbese was categorical that he had not personally endorsed the nomination. He maintained that he had not even met with Ugochinyere since December 2025, and therefore could not have signed any document supporting him. The privilege has been breached, he argued, because his signature was used for a purpose it was never intended for, and he asked the House for leave to probe and investigate the circumstances.
The dispute was further inflamed by a report in the online newspaper Aljazirah, which alleged that each of the 61 lawmakers had collected the sum of 50,000 dollars before appending their signatures to the endorsement list. Agbese firmly rejected the claim, telling colleagues and the public that he had not received any amount of money from anybody, and dismissing the circulating reports as false and damaging to his reputation.
Ugochinyere, for his part, rejected the forgery allegation outright and offered a sharply different account of events. He insisted that Agbese had personally visited his office and signed the nomination form voluntarily and independently, in the presence of other lawmakers. Describing the forgery claim as false and defamatory, he said the colleagues who had witnessed the signing were ready to testify before the Speaker to confirm his version of what happened.
As the exchange degenerated into a shouting match on the floor, the Speaker moved to calm tempers by announcing that the minority caucus would hold a separate meeting to resolve the disagreement. The clash underscores the high stakes surrounding the contest for Minority Leader, a position that shapes how the opposition organises itself in the House and prepares for the political battles expected ahead of the next general election.