Senate crisis deepens

The National Assembly reconvenes Tuesday but the crisis that forced it to adjourn for one month seems to have deepened Daily Trust can report.The Assembly was inaugurated on June 9 but both the Senate and the House of Representatives only sat for four days in the last five weeks.This followed the crisis over the elections […]

The National Assembly reconvenes Tuesday but the crisis that forced it to adjourn for one month seems to have deepened Daily Trust can report.
The Assembly was inaugurated on June 9 but both the Senate and the House of Representatives only sat for four days in the last five weeks.
This followed the crisis over the elections that produced the leaders of both chambers.
Senator Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara broke ranks with their party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) to emerge as Senate President and House Speaker respectively with the support of the opposition PDP. It emerged yesterday in Abuja that the one-month break has not done anything to narrow the gulf between the two sides as the Assembly prepares to reconvene on Tuesday.
Already, the crisis is threatening legislative business in the upper chamber, including the confirmation of the newly appointed service chiefs.
It was learnt that series of meetings were held separately by some party leaders with some of the senators in attendance, but no resolution was reached.
Senator Kabiru Marafa (APC, Zamfara) told Daily Trust on telephone yesterday that there was no way the service chiefs could be confirmed because “the Senate is not legally constituted.”
The President has the constitutional powers to appoint people on acting capacity for about six months, so as far as their confirmation is concerned, there is no cause for alarm.
But he added: “… The real issue is, the Senate is not properly constituted to confirm them now. Nigerians are all aware of how the Senate was inaugurated using forged document.
“We are lawmakers and we must be seen to be protecting the law. If some people can sit down and change the Senate rules, then one day somebody will just insert something in the constitution and they’ll say it comes to stand,” he said.
 “Look at what they did on another order. They went and said that the composition of chairmanship of committees must reflect regional balance. Who did that?
“That is criminal as far as we are concerned. Unless all these things are investigated properly, we cannot function properly as a Senate.
“This is not personal. It is the case of forgery, so who do you reconcile with? Saraki and Ekweremadu are not my enemies. In fact, Ekweremadu took me as a brother when I came to the Senate. But this is about Nigeria and not my interest. We cannot allow this to continue. Every Nigerian has a duty to check this thing so that it won’t become the practice all over the country,” he said.
However, speaking to our correspondent on telephone, Deputy Senate Leader Na’Allah said questioning the legality of the current Senate would also raise a legitimacy problem for such person
He said: “Constitutionally, when elections are conducted and winners emerge in the Senate and the House of Representatives, they are referred to as senators and members-elect. The reason is that one cannot be called a senator or member until he subscribes to oath of office and oath of allegiance, which validity is defined by signatures of the Senate president and the speaker respectively for the two chambers.”
“Both the oath of office and the oath of allegiance have columns for the Senate president and the speaker to sign, which must be with the mace at its proper place when the Senate or House is in plenary. It is at this stage that senators and members-elect will become lawmakers, meeting the requirement of the constitution.
“But if a senator or member turns back to say the Senate or House is not properly constituted, he is indirectly and legally saying that he is not a lawmaker of the Federal Republic of Nigeria but still a senator or member-elect.
“Conversely, if he admits that he is a senator or member, he is legally saying that the legality supplied by the Senate president or speaker by their signatures on the oath of allegiance and oath of office are correct,” he said.
On the allegations that the Senate Standing Orders of 2011 was forged to produce that of 2015, Na’Allah said “There is a difference between forgery and falsification, therefore when a person alleges that a document has been forged, he must go further to show the particular provisions or sections in the contents of the documents that are alleged to have been forged that is material difference with the document that he knows.”
President Muhammadu Buhari had at a recent meeting of the APC insisted that party supremacy should prevail. However, attempts to make truce with the Senate leadership have repeatedly failed.
Efforts to get the presidency’s comment on the issue last night were not successful.