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Ndume Advocates Vibrant, Efficient Senate

By Njadvara Musa, Maiduguri
18 April 2015   |   12:07 am
AS Nigerians await the emergence of Senate President in the incoming Gen. Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume said that the country’s Upper Legislative Chamber, has “fallen short of people’s high expectations,” in the last 16 years.
Senator Ndume

Senator Ndume

AS Nigerians await the emergence of Senate President in the incoming Gen. Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume said that the country’s Upper Legislative Chamber, has “fallen short of people’s high expectations,” in the last 16 years.

Ndume, who was returned to represent Borno South in the National Assembly elections on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) told journalists that the person or candidate Nigerians expect to head the Senate is “a Senate President and not a senators’ president.”

He said “In the past, the nation has been saddled with someone who kills the vibrancy of the upper legislative chamber,” adding, “It would be fair if the Northeastern region especially the Borno/Yobe axis was considered to lead the Senate as it had never been given such responsibility.”

The said the person who emerges as Senate President “should also allow motions and bills to be debated on the floor without undue interference or manipulation.”

The senator observed that “The relationship between the Senate leadership and other members should be seen with an eye of equals or at best first among equals,” Ndume noted, adding that the coming of former governors into Senate was also responsible for converting the senate president into senators’ president, insisting that this much change under the APC administration.

On the abduction of 219 Chibok schoolgirls, Ndume said: “The federal government and the Chief of Defense Staff, Air Marshal Alex Badeh should be held responsible,” insisting that if the issues had been taken seriously until now, the girls could have been rescued, a year after their abduction by insurgents.

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