Instead of Presidency/Senate reconciliation committee: AN EDITORIAL

President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, during the week’s Federal Executive Committee meeting, set up a reconciliation committee to end the rift between Senate and the executive.  The committee, headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, was meant to work to the root cause of the rift and find a solution.

While that was done, some Senate sources were reported to have boasted giving conditions for peace with the Buhari’s government to include review of allocation which they claimed was left out while the allocation of the judiciary was increased in the 2017 budget.  The Senate sources also wanted, as a condition for peace with the Federal Government, that all the ongoing criminal and corruption trials against Senator Bukola Saraki be dropped by the Buhari administration.  Saraki is just one person in the institution but the Senators working for him chose to rock the institution as against the person.  They demanded more.

Irked by the conditions, described by many as elected lawmakers’ evils against a government they should be part of, some Nigerians opposed to the demands by the Senate sources had asked President Buhari to realise certain issues in all that the Senate was doing.  They said what was required was not to set up a reconciliation committee but for the President to stand his ground as an all-powerful national leader.

Those Nigerians believed that the Senators occupying the current Senate had done enough to show that they are not part of the process for making Nigeria better and that such could be sensed from the ways and utterances that had come from the leadership of the upper chamber, which included a comment credited to the Senate President Bukola Saraki some days ago captioned, “I will shut down Buhari’s government in 72 hours if the cabals in Aso Rock Villa push me to the wall.”

That statement, huge and more treasonable as it was, had not been denied by Saraki neither had anything been said about it by anybody in the Presidency.  But Nigerians, who believed that they voted for Buhari to solve their problems but found him to be too soft with the way Saraki had carried himself arrogating exclusive powers to himself, warned the President to watch it as “it is Buhari’s government that will be referred to in the future not Saraki or Melaye’s government.”

Saraki and other Senators in his red chamber had been heard, according to Muhammed Fawehinmi, saying Ibrahim Mustapha Magu had been terrorising them and as a result of that they had consistently stood their ground saying “no way” for Magu to be confirmed as substantive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).  Fawehinmi however stated clearly that Magu would not have terrorised them if they had not done anything wrong that fell under the purview of Magu to deal with.  It is clear, from the look of things, that the Saraki’s Senate set out to attack the very core of the Buhari’s main objectives in government: anti-corruption.  Saraki gave Buhari two weeks ultimatum to send another name for the EFCC job or he would not confirm the 27 names the President had forwarded for appointment as Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) for INEC to conduct credible elections for Nigeria.

Is it the place of the Senate to tell the President who to choose to serve Nigeria under his government?  This is one of the questions that President Buhari must ask the Senate and if he drops Magu, he would have lost the battle against corruption in Nigeria.

Left to Muhammed Fawehinmi alone, the Senate should be scrapped forthwith while the House of Representatives should henceforth be what would be referred to as the National Assembly.  He said on a TVC This Morning programme on Thursday that any of the President and the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) had the powers to shutdown the Senate and let the Senators go home and rest as, according to him, they had arrogated so much powers to themselves whereas most of the things they had done were without knowledge.  He said he would discuss with the CJN the need to henceforth make it compulsory for every Senator to master the Constitution before he could be entrusted the job of the Senate as he said many of the Senators currently in the Eight Senate including the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, a lawyer, knew nothing about the laws.  It therefore makes one wonder how people who do not know the laws are making the laws.

At this juncture, The DEFENDER has resolved to therefore call on President Muhammadu Buhari to see the challenges and threats posed by Senator Bukola Saraki, whose main guard currently is Senator Dino Melaye, as a serious issue that must be seriously handled by the government.  It is out of place for Senator Saraki to pick at Presidency at anything said or done.  The rate at which he summons members of the executive is indicative of a resolve to actualise the statement that nobody has wished to believe came from him: to shut down Buhari’s government.  We in this media see all that are happening as a way of causing confusion so that the Buhari’s government would actually be shut down and therefore we call for urgent action on the part of the Federal Government.

If care is not taken and these Senators rubbish the President and government, we believe, it is going to send a dangerous signal to gathering the kind of commitment that the masses of the Nigerian people already gave to the Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government in the future.

We therefore advise as follows: President Buhari should gather the bigwigs in laws.  He has Professor Itse Sagay, who is not only senior advocate of Nigeria but also more competently a professor of law. He also has as his Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, who also is a senior advocate of Nigeria and professor of law.  The President should gather all of the bigwigs vast and sound in laws to come together, sit down with them and ask them, “What are my powers in the matter on ground that is causing me all these embarrassments from the Senate?  What are my limitations?  Where does the power of the Senate begin?  Where does it stop?  If I decide to stand my ground and stand to their threats, what can I do?”

These are the things that many meaningful Nigerians are expecting the President to do.  There are many Senators in the Saraki’s Senate who are not part of the threats and declarations of war that he had made against the Buhari’s government.  But they are looking at it that Buhari caused the problem and that if he cannot open the hit-back, it will not start from them.

Now, in our view, that Mr. President wants an Osinbajo Committee to reconcile with a caucus of Senators, whose major characteristics cum conditions for accepting his reconciliation are to drop his anti-corruption fight against corrupt politicians among them, what purpose will the reconciliation have served at the end of the day?

President Muhammadu Buhari should get up and drop the toga of gentility that his converted democrat has made of him and rise to action.  If it was done in Senegal where the President exercised his powers as the man in charge of the country and scrapped the Senate of the land, how much more of Africa’s most populous nation that Nigeria is to be afraid of doing same?

A stitch in time, The DEFENDER says to Mr. President at this time, saves nine!