Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has described Wednesday’s removal of Senator Ali Ndume as the Senate’s Chief Whip as a clear pattern of the National Assembly becoming an enabler of recklessness of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led executive.
Recall that Ndume, senator representing Borno South, was stripped of his senate leadership position yesterday and also removed as the vice chairman of the senate’s appropriation committee following a letter from the All Progressives Congress (APC) protesting against the senator’s remarks on the food crisis in the country.
Ndume had said in an interview last week that the president was not in the picture of what is happening outside the Villa, alleging that the president has been fenced off.
Reacting to Ndume’s sanction by the senate in a tweet on his official Twitter (now X) account, Atiku said Ndume’s case and similar punishment meted on Senator Abdul Ningi for similar actions earlier in the year only point to the fact that “concerns of the people stand in the nadir of priority list of the legislature.”
Also making reference to Senate’s approval of the new presidential fleet despite public outcry, Atiku said there is a need for a collective voice of reasoning to impress on the National Assembly to stop and live up to its mandate.
“This emerging reality must stop. The health of our democracy is being compromised by this unholy alliance between the executive and the legislature and portends a dictatorship that will worsen the lot of the people,” he said.
The full statement reads: “In the evolution of systems of government, a major concern for thinkers was a governmental framework that will reduce the highhandedness of the executive arm of government. It was thought, and rightly so too, that a participatory approach to governance, such that will make the government derive its legitimacy from the people will better serve the interest of the masses.”
“And thus, to make sure that the executive does not go overboard in the application of its powers, the legislative arm of government was conceived as a means of protecting the people from the authoritarian tendencies of wielders of state powers.
“Regrettably, however, the democracy in Nigeria in the current administration of President Bola Tinubu has become an anathema to that general principle of democracy as providing primary protection for the people against executive excesses.
“This ugly tendency is being manifested by the steady posturing of our National Assembly, especially the Senate, of taking a reverse course in its core function and becoming a puppet in the hands of the President.
“It is uncharitable that whenever members of the Senate stand on the floor of the red chamber to perform their statutory duty of calling the executive to order, they are immediately reprimanded for so doing.
“When Senator Abdul Ningi called attention of the country to the incident of budget padding in the 2024 Appropriation bill, rather than calling for a thorough investigation into the observation, the reaction of the Senate was to hand him a suspension. Today, the people of Nigeria are victims of ambiguous budget framework upon which appropriations for the current fiscal year are hinged in the face of multiplicity of appropriations.
“Only yesterday, Senator Ali Ndume called for the President to wake up to his responsibilities and provide succour to address the biting hunger and poverty in the country. Ironically, the response of the @NGRSenate to his patriotic warning is to relieve him of his principal office as the Chief Whip of the Senate.
“Also, despite persistent solicitations that government put its priorities on canceling the excruciating hardship in the land and suspend the idea of spending scarce resources on the purchase of new aircraft for the presidential fleet, the Senate took a stand against the people and ignored the voices of altruism by decorating the President with controversial purchases of an aircraft and a yacht amidst the worst material conditions of the average citizen in the history of our country.
“We are, therefore, beginning to see a pattern in which the National Assembly has become an enabler of executive recklessness, and the concerns of the people stand in the nadir of priority list of the legislature.
“This emerging reality must stop. The health of our democracy is being compromised by this unholy alliance between the executive and the legislature and portends a dictatorship that will worsen the lot of the people.”
