Speaking on the outgoing Senate’s controversial moves to amend the Senate Standing Rules in order to shut out all new senators from eyeing the presiding and principal officers positions in the Red Chamber, Eze said there was no contest in the first place to warrant any rigging of the rules.
He said, “I want to say that the issue of ranking senators taking precedence on matters of presiding officers down to committee chairmanship is already in our rules. Section 97 (1f) of the rule is clear on that. What we are doing now is just to make clarification, which is not provided in the present rule.”
Eze denied any selfish motive behind the amendment saying, “it is not about David Mark or any other individual in the Senate. It is about deepening our democracy. It has nothing to do with Mark as a person, it is all about institutional integrity on how to stabilise our democracy.”
He said the incumbent Senate President has performed well enough to earn a return. “Do you really think there is a contest? There is no contest to warrant amendment for any individual,” he said.
Eze also said the proposed amendment is in line with Section 60 of the 1999 Constitution which empowers each chamber of the National Assembly to regulate its own proceedings. “You may be aware that some people that have not even come to the chamber are thinking of going to court to challenge our ability to exercise Section 60 of the Constitution,” he said.
He said experience matters much in the task of presiding over the Senate, saying “as a second term senator, if you make me a presiding officer it will be a major challenge, not to talk of someone who is just coming for the first time.”
Meanwhile, a meeting of all senators-elect has been scheduled for tomorrow in Abuja to further iron out the issues surrounding selection of presiding officers, principal officers and committee chairmen before the inauguration of the new Senate.
Sources among the incoming senators, who will form a majority in the next Senate, told Daily Trust yesterday that they are moving to throw overboard the controversial amendments being pushed by outgoing senators to the Senate rules in order to railroad a second tenure for David Mark. An incoming senator said, “they [the outgoing senators] are labouring in vain. They were there for four years and they did not amend the rules, until most of them were defeated in the elections and they are just about to depart. Mark is using them for his rigging plans, but it won’t work. We will throw out the new rule first thing in the new term.”
No comments:
Post a Comment