Southern senators tackle northern forum over restructuring

The claim by the Chairman of the Northern Senators Forum, Senator Abudulahi Adamu that it was wrong for the Southern Senators to demand that President Mohammadu Buhari should implement the report of the 2014 National Conference has been dismissed as the product of thorough confusion and crass ignorance of the issues at stake.

In a direct reply to the communiqué issued by the Southern Senators at their retreat in Calabar last month, which among other things asked President Buhari to convene a meeting of stakeholders on the conference report. Adamu had declared in Katsina where Northern Senators held their own retreat, that the demand was “a fallacy and borne out of ignorance”, wondering how the President should be expected to implement the report of a conference he was not part of.

But in a statement at the weekend in Abuja, Chairman of the Southern Senators Forum, Sen. Hope Uzodumma dismissed. Adamu’s claims as unfounded and “a product of thorough confusion and crass ignorance of the issues at stake”.

Uzodimma said Adamu’s actions and utterance smack of that of a town Union President who out of unnecessary zealotry to protect his union and who erroneously sees the President of the Country as a member of his union embarks on an indecent haste to speak for the President all in the name of protecting his Town Union.

Uzodimma argued that if his Northern colleague had taken time to study the communiqué he would have realized that it was drawn from the position papers submitted by eminent Nigerians from all over the country, including the Attorney-General of the Federation, and Minister for justice, Governor of Jigawa State and Bishop Matthew Kukah of Sokoto State.

Besides, Uzodimma argued, that the communiqué merely asked President Buhari to convene a meeting of Governors and the leadership of the National and State Assembles to consider the report and forward to the National Assembly for debate. He wondered why Adamu should be in a hurry to defend a President who has not complained about the communiqué and asked “has Adamu forgotten that the President’s party and his party too, the APC, promised restructing in their manifesto. He recalled that even Adamu admitted that the 2014 conference report treated restructing extensively and asked, “What is wrong in asking the President whose party promised restructing to consider sending a restructing report to the National Assembly”

On Adamu’s argument that the President was not part of the 2014 conference and therefore cannot implement it, Uzodimma said that argument was “puerile and laughable” and asked “why is the President implementing the 1999 constitution or even international treaties? Was he part of any of them?

“Let me inform my colleague that Southern Senators met in Calabar on a well planned retreat on how to deepen National Unity through devolution of powers. It appears that in Adamu’s indecent haste to attack our retreat he ended up holding one that had only sectional interest, and not national interest as theme, including how to extend the oversight functions of Senators to the implementation of the 1918 budget in the Northern States. This inability to distinguish between the roles of the legislature from that of the executive is the height of confusion and ignorance’s and it is truly unfortunate,”  he said.