The National Assembly may soon be in the news again for the wrong reasons if the different tunes emanating from senators and members of the House of Representatives on the planned reconvening of the federal parliament on Tuesday are anything to go by.
Investigations revealed that no official communication had been sent out by the leadership of the national legislature to any member to either announce the postponement of the September 25 resumption or inform them to resume on that day.
Members of the National Assembly, through separate motions by their majority leaders in July, agreed to reconvene on Tuesday, September 25, 2018, after their annual recess.
However, majority of the members appeared busy with the process of getting their parties’ tickets to retain their seats as the September 25 resumption date draws near.
Some members of the All Progressives Congress and those of the Peoples Democratic Party, in separate interviews with our correspondence strictly on conditions of anonymity, traded allegations on planned secret sittings by the opposing sides that day.
The APC lawmakers said they had uncovered a plot by the National Assembly leadership to secretly send out invitations via text messages to the PDP lawmakers to resume on Tuesday.
But their opposition colleagues said their colleagues in the ruling party were actually planning to secure a court order on Monday or Tuesday morning, mandating one-third members of both chambers to reconvene.
The PDP lawmakers claimed that their colleagues in the APC wanted to take advantage of the current situation to change the presiding officers of both chambers who had defected to the PDP.
A member of the APC from the North-West geopolitical zone, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told one of our correspondents that the PDP senators planned to embarrass President Muhammadu Buhari on that day by passing a vote-of-no-confidence in him.
The plan, according to him, is that the PDP lawmakers will capitalise on the killings in the North and Buhari’s refusal to sign the electoral law amendment bill, among others to justify their action.
He said, “They know that Tuesday is resumption and the APC presidential primary, where Buhari is expected to emerge as the candidate, will also hold that day. They are also aware that many of us will like to witness the occasion.
“They did not want the news of Buhari’s emergence as the sole candidate to dominate the media space that day; so, they want the vote-of-no-confidence story to spoil the show for our party.”
Another APC senator said, “Yes, (members of the) opposition in the National Assembly are planning to strike. They want to open the federal parliament at a time the APC lawmakers would be busy with their screening and preparing for the primaries.
“The whole idea is to make it possible for the PDP lawmakers to hide under the guise of INEC budget and electoral act amendments, especially the sequence of elections, to pass a vote-of-no-confidence in the president.
“Part of their reasons is the unabated killings going on in the country either by the herdsmen or by the Boko Haram insurgents.”.
-The Punch
