By Haruna Salami
The Nigerian Senate has on Thursday insisted that it will recognize only the board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, whose names were forwarded to the Senate for screening and confirmation.
Addressing Journalists after plenary on Thursday, the Senate spokesperson, Senator Godiya Akwashiki said, the Senate President in line with section 18(sub section 1) of the constitution, has directed the Senate committee on Niger Delta Affairs to only deal with the board members of the NDDC it screened and confirmed this month in line with section 2 subsection 2, which says the chairman or the MD of the NDDC shall be appointed by the president subject to the confirmation by the Senate in consultation with the House of reps.
“So, today we have confirmed the nominees of Mr. President in line with the Act establishing the NDDC. He has sent the nominees to the Senate already and we have confirmed them. Our own is to communicate with Mr. President whether we cleared them or not. We have cleared them except one person who refused to show up.
Meanwhile the resolution of the Senate has been sent to the Mr. President and it is not our responsibility to inaugurate them. And today Mr. President has sent the budget proposal of the NDDC to the Senate that is why we’ve referred to the committee on Niger Delta to invite whoever is there to come for the budget defence, and the senate president has said categorically that the committee should only deal with the people that have been cleared by the Senate because we are the law makers.
He noted that if they entertain any other person, somebody can just wake up any day and say he is a care taker or the MD of the NDDC.
However, he said that the issue of caretaker or not was not a problem to the Senate because the it was doing exactly what the law says. They can only act when during the budget defence another group of persons not known to them force themselves to the National Assembly with the intention to cause problem. At that stage the Senate will rise to the occasion”.
On the letter of request for borrowing read on the floor of the Senate on Thursday, Sen. Akwashiki said though similar request was made by the President to the 8th Assembly and was rejected on the basis that the letter was not accorded with details of the borrowing.
But, he insisted that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigria gives the President the right under the Act establishing NDDC to write to the National Assembly to request for approval whenever he wants to borrow for any purpose that mean of the betterment of the people of the NDDC or Nigeria as a whole.
“So that request that was made to the 8th assembly and was rejected, I want to believe the life of the 8th Assembly has expired, this is entirely another Senate or another assembly. so I don’t want to discuss that, hence whether this one came with the detail or not I want to urged all of you to exercise patience when we get there you will know whether it came with the details or it did not come with the details, because we are going to discuss it, the letter was just read at the plenary that there is a request for so, so and so, definitely we are going to set aside a day to deliberate on the request of Mr. President this is something that will be discuss by the entire senators and agree and send the resolutions by the senate to the president,” Sen. Akwashiki said
It will be recalled that the senate has on November 5, 2019 confirmed Mr. Pius Odubu as the chairman of the NDDC and fourteen other board members.
Sen. Akwashiki also insisted that the insinuations that the Hate Speech bill was a tool for President Buhari’s third term agenda was totally false, stressing that Nigeria has no provision for third term in her constitution and if anybody wants that, it means they must first amend the constitution before anything else follows.
According to him, people should stop parading such falsehood because there is no way the Senate can embark on constitutional amendment in order to pave way for third term.