PDP tasks Senators over Lawan’s comment

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has advised the leadership of the Senate to resist any forms of intimidation from the Presidency to surrender its independence and pass bills and requests without statutory legislative scrutiny and oversights.

According to a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday by Kola Ologbondiyan, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, the party’s position was predicated on the blanket comment credited to the Senate President, Senator Ahmed Lawan, that any request from President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly was good for the nation, even without subjecting such requests to statutory legislative scrutiny.

The PDP described such stance as unconstitutional and unacceptable as, according to it, it amounted to relinquishing statutory powers of checks and balances of the National Assembly.

The statement added: “This, our party notes, will create an alarming impression that the present National Assembly has been annexed by the executive and reduced to a rubber-stamp legislature.

“The statement by the Senate President has heavily detracted from the expected independence of the legislature. It is fast eroding the confidence Nigerians have on the Senate and the National Assembly, as true representatives of the people at the national level.”

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The party noted that even if the Senate leadership believed in the import of any request or bill from the President, the 1999 Constitution (as amended) required the legislature to pass such through its statutory checks and balances processes to ensure that the content and intent were in tandem with the overall national interest.

The PDP further said: “Such legislative checks are enshrined in the constitution to curtail the excesses of the executive as well as create room for the democratic tenet of citizens’ participation through their elected representatives.

“Anything to the contrary is a direct suspension of our constitution, enthronement of dictatorship and a sidestepping of the legislative powers, which is capable of destroying the institution of the National Assembly.

“Moreover, legislative processes for statutory interfaces with other arms of government, particularly the executive, is governed by the constitution, laid down legislative rules, practices and conventions and not by the narrow-minded assumptions of any single individual.”

The PDP, therefore, reminded the Senate President that the National Assembly was the very symbol of our nation’s democracy, saying, “It is an institution that belongs to the people and not to any political party or group. Ceding its independence, therefore, amounts to surrendering the sovereignty of the people.”

The party, therefore, charged National Assembly members to ensure they lived up to their billings by insisting on their oversight functions as well as take immediate steps to reassure Nigerians on its capacity to protect their interests at all time.