.jpg)
Angry Senators of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP yesterday shutdown the National Assembly to protest the perceived injustice allegedly meted to them by the ruling party.
Among other intra-party issues, the Senators are kicking against the governors’ hijack of the just-concluded PDP ward congresses and the move by some governors, who are serving their second terms in office to replace them in the Upper House.
At the last count, close to 10 PDP governors had acquired the party’s nomination forms to contest for Senatorial seats, an action that had threatened the plan of the Senators from such constituencies to seek re-election.
In line with their threat on Tuesday to shutdown government business, the PDP Senators yesterday refused to sit and work on pending bills before the Upper House.
They adjourned sitting as the Senate President, David Mark hurriedly intervened to end the impasse. He called for a meeting of the PDP Caucus in the Senate to discuss the matter after which they adjourned sitting till Tuesday next week.
The meeting, which was chaired by him, lasted for 45minutes without any official statement.
Mark said: “As chairman of National Assembly, I am not unmindful of the problem that is going on. I am therefore going to do all I can to resolve the current impasse. Furthermore, the matter is already before a court of law; we cannot therefore discuss the issues here. I want to assure all of you that I will do the needful to protect and defend the legislature at all cost.’’
Senate Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, who confirmed the impasse, said: “I’m sure you are aware that PDP Caucus met yesterday and today (Tuesday and Wednesday) on fundamental issues affecting democracy in Nigeria arising from the ward congresses of our party last Saturday.
“The issues need to be addressed urgently by relevant PDP stakeholders in the interest of our democracy. You will all surely be briefed when the issues are addressed.”
Reminded that the continuous boycott of legislative business in the Senate at this time of escalating Boko Haram attacks could portray the Senate in bad light before Nigerians, he said: “If we do not have our democracy, we won’t have the senate. Our democracy is bigger than the senate,” adding that the situation in the North-East requires military action and is being handled by the military.
Meanwhile, the PDP Senator’s action didn’t go down well with their All Progressives Congress, APC counterparts, who said they were willing to work because Nigerians elected them to do so.
Through their spokesman, Senator Femi Ojudu, the APC lawmakers said it was payback time for the PDP Senators for supporting injustice when they ought to cry out.
Ojudu said: “We are victims of it, if we have our way, we in APC, will come here tomorrow (today) and sit. It should not be about personal interests but about the future of this country, it should be about our people. Now they have seen injustice, they are fighting. We have seen injustice more than three and half years ago; we wanted to fight, they didn’t allow us; why must it be that it is when it affects them that they are acting?”
“People should have standards. Now they have seen that most of them are no longer welcome in their homes, they have seen that they have made themselves slaves to the executive, and when you make yourself a slave, they will treat you as one, that is the consequence of compromise.”
Ojodu continued: “But Nigerians voted us here to work, we must work. Under the rules we cannot but work because that was why we all unanimously said nay, but again you know how that is determined. We were voted for by Nigerians and we are working for Nigerians, but because they (PDP Senators) have problems with their party, with their president and with their governors, we are not allowed to work. We don’t want to be seen that APC members don’t want to work. We want to work but the system does not allow us to do so. The rules as practiced by the majority, it does not allow us to work.
“It is unfortunate that we are in the minority, we will have our say and they will have their way. We are going to call a meeting of our caucus to discuss this; we even expected that they will call an executive meeting and then we discuss this matter, but they just came in and adjourned like that. Some of us came from our constituencies, faraway places so that we could sit for this week, but we are here, we are not allowed to sit.
“Suddenly, conservatives of yesterday have turned to today’s radicals. We do not love what is happening to them, it is about the effect of these on Nigerians. Mubi in Adamawa State has been taken over by insurgents, Gombe has been taken over by Boko Haram, this is the time when all of us should gird our loins and fight on behalf of our compatriots who are being displaced. Go and look at photographs of people who are running away from their homes. If you have lived in a place for 20 years, 30 years and you now have to carry a small bag to run away from there, do you know how traumatic that can be, at this time we are thinking of ourselves alone, we should be thinking about those people,” he said.
With the Senate’s adjournment and the earlier one by the House of Representatives, the National Assembly has been shutdown by the lawmakers.
Source: Nigerian Pilot
No comments:
Post a Comment