The Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume ( APC Borno South), recently fielded questions from journalists on contentious issues in the National Assembly and the senate. TAIYE ODEWALE was there. Excerpts.
How do you feel as a member of the National Assembly over the ongoing war between Hon Abdulmumin Jibrin and the leadership of the House on alleged Paddings in the 2016 budget?
I don’t want to say that there was budget padding and I don’t want to talk about something I really don’t know, but what is happening in the House of Represenatives is just very unfortunate because we have processes and procedures of doing things in the National Assembly. If somebody has an issue or grievances within the parliament he should know how to go about it internally. The press shouldn’t have been the place for accusations and counter accusations over such matter.
But I think and strongly believe that the House on resumption in September, would address the issue the way it supposed to be addressed because I was part of them and by being in the parliament, am still part of them and I have being trying to reach out to both sides and we are working on that.
There is nothing like budget padding especially if it is the National Assembly that works on it because padding to me, is like illegality. Adding to or subtracting from budgetary provisions forwarded to it by the executive in the course of appropriation is not padding and even if an entirely new project is added into the budget by way of appropriation by the National Assembly and duly passed and later signed into law by the executive, that to me, is not padding but let’s wait and see how the whole thing will end.
How would you react to the changes effected in the leadership of some standing committees in the senate recently by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki?
You know after the inauguration of the 8th Senate we had issues and all of you here know. It was turbulence in the Senate and as we went through we tried to find how out to settle that turbulence. Part of which is fair sharing of the committees as a way of complying to the directives of the party or the leadership structure, this is the fact of the matter.
That action by the Senate President was in line with the need for extension of hands of friendship from both ends in bringing about a smooth and stable senate devoid of rancour but one with peaceful environment for effective lawmaking and stabilizing the system. If you remember, the division in the senate at a time, got to a level where it was seen more or less by some Nigerians, as a burdensome institution to the nation which made us as senators to give ourselves critical assessments at several closed door sessions to find ways out of the problems one of which was the need to recompose the committees as demanded for by the Unity Forum group as well as the issue of the leadership of the senate.
Since the demand on committee composition is at the discretion of the Senate President and it is within the powers of the selection committee which the senate president chairs, he brought the proposal before us and we felt that there was nothing too much to guarantee peace in any place and we approved it at the leadership level for peace to reign in the senate. This is a routine thing that is normally done and we strongly believe that it will help in soothing some nerves and provide us with the needed conducive environment on resumption in September for effective legislative work in the Senate.
Has the Senate succeeded in settling the quarrel between Senators Oluremi Tinubu and Dino Melaye?
I was not around when Oluremi and Dino had that issue and by the time I came back we had a closed session that was when Oluremi wrote to the IG over the issue. Oluremi is a senator and Dino is also a senator and Ali Ndume is also a senator. The only difference is that Dino is chairman, Senate Committee on FCT and Oluremi is now chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and I am the Senate Leader but I am not senators leader.
These are personal issues between two senators; myself I am the senate leader not senators leader, you see I am handicapped. I went to Tinubu to beg her and I was the one that asked Melaye that they must settle it. You also can do that either Muslim or Christian. Oluremi told me personally that she has forgiven Dino and Dino has already said he is ready to move on and that there is no problem.
At the closed session where Senators Tinubu and Melaye had the squabble, some other senators were alleged to have called for impeachment move against President Buhari. How would you react to such move?
Senate alone cannot impeach the President, It is the National Assembly that can impeach the president and it is by 2/3 based on clearly stated impeachable offences that must be served on the president which he must respond to, or if he fails to respond , the process is there .
It is a process, is a long tedious process and in this country we don’t even need that we are not even contemplating on it and even if anybody contemplates on it, it is not going to work because this is APC senate; we have the majority, we have 58 to 60 senators and you need 72 senators to start off impeachment process.
In a nutshell, the issue of impeachment is non-existent in the senate. We don’t need it because we don’t have a president that has issues of corruption, integrity, mismanagement of the economy at hand. We have a president that is straight forward and he doesn’t have any mismanagement of anything through abuse of due process.
What is your take on the working relationship between the Senate and the executive in view of the strained relationship between its leadership and the presidency in recent times?
The working relationship between us and the executive is not bad in anyway and in fact, has been improving. Any time we called any minister to appear before us, they did as recently seen with the appearances of the governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele and the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun on the state of the nation’s economy. Even the Attorney- General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami honoured the Senate’s summon as regards the forgery case, meaning that the so called strained relationship between the senate and the AGF over the forgery case is not as bad as being reported by the media because he is doing his job and we are doing our job. So, as far as we are concerned in the senate, the relationship between us and the executive is good and not bad as being portrayed by the media.