NASS working to pass bills in nation’s interest, says Senate Leader

The Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan, yesterday gave indication that peace has returned to the National Assembly.

According to him, lawmakers are more interested in working for the national interest by passing the relevant bills that would move the nation forward.

Prior to the reconvening of the National Assembly on Tuesday, Lawan had declared at the All Progressives Congress (APC) Convention at the Eagle Square on Saturday night that APC will not allow leadership of the National Assembly run away with its mandate.

While the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has been of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the Senate President, Bukola Saraki had recently defected from the APC to the PDP.

But speaking on the crisis with State House correspondents yesterday at the Presidential Villa, Lawan said “I don’t know what informed your view to anticipate crisis but let me tell you that NASS will continue to remain focus on national issues, we must be patriotic, nationalistic, we must put national interest above individual, parochial or partisan interest.

“We definitely have to bury our hatchets for us to work for Nigeria and Nigerians perhaps that might have informed the disappointment of many people that there will be crisis in the National Assembly.

“Let me also say that disagreements are usual, in fact they are very practical components of any  parliament, when you have 2 to 3 parties or even within parties you will have views that may differ.

“It is traditional, it is usual for us to disagree maybe this disagreements  may crop up and some other issues but for now our focus is on national interest.” he said

Asked if the idea of impeachment has been dropped, he said “The National Assembly is a Nigerian parliament and therefore  the best thing to do is to ensure that Nigerians get a good deal and for now the good deal is for Nigeria to have all those pending requests of Mr President approved by the National Assembly.

“I think the national interest for now overrides any other interest.” he said

Speaking further on the resumption day, he said “Well you could see from day one, day one Tuesday was not an eventful day because the National Assembly lost a member, a member from Kwara. So traditionally, we normally don’t work on such a day when the death will be officially announced.

“But Wednesday and Thursday witnessed the focus and concentration of members of the National Assembly on the request of Mr President for the funding of INEC for elections to be conducted in 2019 and we passed in the Senate and the House did also.

“We passed the request of Mr President for N189 billion for INEC activities for 2019.On Thursday the committee on appropriation invited the heads of the security agencies to come and defend the request that Mr President made on their behalf for funding of their supervisory and oversight  roles during the  elections in 2019.

“We also had the referral of the request of Mr President approval for foreign loan component of the 2018 appropriation and that is about 2.78 billion dollars eurobond. We have gone full blast consciously, purposely to ensure that Mr President gets what’s he requests, we lost time because some of the issues were requested for before we went on our recess.

“But we have also in the Senate passed confirmations of the CBN deputy governor, ICPC governing body and we are determined to continue to do this throughout this period.

“Our intention is to ensure that Mr President doesn’t lack from inactivity of the NASS that whatever he requests, the fundamental aspects especially will be attended to, this is our determination both as APC senators infact as Senate and National Assembly.” he added