Former presidential aide, Laolu Akande, has faulted the Senate leadership for refusing to allow Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan to resume legislative duties despite completing a six-month suspension.
Speaking on his My Take segment of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande on Channels Television, on Friday, Akande described the move as “simply outrageous,” warning that the issue had now shifted from a dispute between Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Natasha to a direct assault on the Senate’s role as a symbol of democracy.
“After the upper chamber of the National Assembly illegally suspended one of its own members for six months, the Red Chamber has now said even after the expiration of the six months, the Senator cannot resume work. This is simply outrageous,” Akande said.
He argued that the continued denial of Natasha’s mandate represented “a desecration of democracy,” insisting that no group of senators had the constitutional authority to withhold the will of the electorate.
“What is now a certain desecration,” he declared, “is the continued denial of the mandate of an elected Senator by the Nigerian Senate, preventing the Senator to do what she was elected for. It is an aberration and it is totally unknown to democracy anywhere. The people cannot elect a representative and a group of Senators decide to prevent such a person from performing a duly delivered mandate. It is wrong.”
Akande dismissed the defence that the Senate’s internal rule book permits such disciplinary measures, stressing that the powers of parliament must always bow to the superior authority of the electorate.
“That rule book gets its powers from among the Senators themselves,” he explained. “But there is a power of the electorate which is and must remain superior. Where is the power to subvert the will of the Kogi people?”
(Daily Trust)
Leave a comment