The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Shehu Sani

  • Shehu Sani, Dino Melaye and Nigeria’s policing conundrum

    POLICING in Nigeria just got more curious with the Kaduna State Police Command inviting the senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, to respond to allegations of criminal conspiracy. The senator, who is locked in battle with the tempestuous Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, has suggested that the invitation is a ploy to frame him in the same manner the senator representing Kogi West, Dino Melaye, was framed for sponsoring and arming thugs. This column observed last week that the Kogi case contained in it more than met the eyes. Barely two weeks later, Sen Sani is also embroiled in a curious police case. Both senators are thought to be stridently indifferent to the camp, and re-election ambition, of President Muhammadu Buhari.

    The Kaduna police commissioner, Austin Iwar, was quoted as saying that a case of murder transferred to the police by the military in Kaduna allegedly mentioned the name of the senator. The suspect in the case, one Isa Garba, was said to have mentioned the name of the senator in the murder of one Lawal Maiduna. Said Mr Iwar in the letter to Sen Sani: “This is in connection with a case of criminal conspiracy and culpable homicide transferred to this office by 1 Division, Nigerian Army, Kaduna, alongside with exhibit audio CD, in which your name was mentioned by the principal suspect.” The police declined to give more clarification, insisting that it was impolitic to do so at the moment.

    The police are of course free to investigate any case reported or transferred to them. But Mr Iwar is wrong to suggest that the police were not required at the point of invitation to elucidate on the case, especially given the suspicions and tensions souring relationships and enveloping politics in the state. It is always necessary, even at the preliminary stage, to dispel any notion of the police being used to facilitate harassment of anyone opposed to both the governor and the president. The police need to jealously and scrupulously guide their image and credibility. Already, the senator himself has considered the invitation as harassment, and likened it to the ongoing mystifying case the police are incautiously building against Sen Melaye in Kogi for being an outspoken critic of both the governor, Yahaya Bello, and President Buhari.

    Sen Sani and the senator representing Kaduna North, Suleiman Hunkuyi, are known to be adamantly opposed to the governor in particular. Their opposition is of such severity that the governor had felt both disgruntled and impelled to return fire for fire against the intransigent senators. Pursuant to this, a few weeks ago, the governor had controversially ordered the demolition of the temporary campaign headquarters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) faction embraced by the two senators. The governor alleged that the said building in Kaduna was converted to purposes other than that for which it was registered, and that in any case the building had defaulted in payment of land use charge.

    In the case of Sen Melaye, he is perhaps the most articulate and trenchant opponent the young but inexperienced and unwise Kogi State governor contends with today. For his trouble, a recall process has been instigated against him; and to pile on the agony, a criminal charge has also been brought against him. He is in fact expected to appear in court soon in order to be charged. Sen Melaye has dismissed the allegations against him as trumped-up. He insists that one or two of those whose testimonies were relied upon to charge him in court were precisely those who masterminded an attack against his person sometime ago.

    The police have often given the impression that they can suffer no consequences for sloppy or misdirected investigations. This is why thousands of suspects are needlessly locked up in police cells or remanded in prison custody for flimsy and legally unsustainable reasons. Apart from the public confidence in the police ebbing, especially in recent years, it is important for the police to be made aware of the fact that they must answer for shoddy investigations or for allowing themselves to be used for political reasons. The Nigerian constitution gives enormous powers to the police. But those powers have often been used irresponsibly or for the wrong reasons. The country eagerly awaits a fundamental restructuring of the Police Force to make it answerable for its actions and to ensure that its enormous powers are used responsibly.

    Contrary to what they think, the police have a duty to disabuse the minds of the public that the two senators are not being needlessly and irresponsibly persecuted at the behest of certain political interests. They owe the public explanations, and those explanations must be given promptly and copiously to assuage any lingering suspicion. The police must be made aware that, so far, Nigerians are dissatisfied with their approach to policing, the inefficiency with which their men are deployed in the face of increasingly fierce and sophisticated criminality in many states, and their often enthusiastic tendency to lend themselves to be used by either powerful interests, particularly the government, or the highest bidder who contemptuously views the police as a mercenary organisation rather than an ethical law enforcement agency.

  • Made in Nigeria heist

    So much for the national outrage ever since the most distinguished Senator Shehu Sani opened the lid on the outlandish perks awarded by our lawmakers to selves. Now, everyone seems to be falling over themselves in the wake of the so-called revelation if only to be reckoned among the counted. Even the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) – the somnambulist agency in charge of fixing salaries and allowances has woken up from its slumber to join the orchestra.  The senators’ N13.5million monthly running cost, it said, is outside of their purview. The executive branch has been quite characteristically mum since; ditto the National Assembly management – which of course leaves the issue of its justification and authorization hanging. Remember, we are talking of funds whose expenditures are guided by the strictures of Financial Regulation and the General Orders.

    Hopefully, the office of the Accountant General of the Federation will, at some point, step in to resolve the riddle.

    Now that the lawmakers have been called out, shall we now go a step further to do what the irrepressible lawmaker from Kaduna has asked the rest of the moral majority to do –that the executive and the judicial branches open up their own salaries and perks for all to see? Fair, after all, is fair. Even at that, Senator Sani seems to have left out the bureaucracy – that cranky machine that somehow manages to serve itself first before any thought for the rest of us; I would rather the institution is added considering its place as the engine room of the bazaar we call governance. For much as the political actors – given their brash and ostentatious lifestyles – are the bad boys we love to hate, it seems to me that we pay too little attention to the viperous brood: the anonymous players in the rank of the public sector. They include the messenger whose salary, although cannot take him home yet manages somehow to put a decent shelter in the sprawling suburbs of the capital cities; the middle level bureaucrat with their fleet of gleaning SUVs who somehow manages to put up half-dozen apartments in choice areas; and the top echelon with their luxury homes in Europe and Americas, whose wards travel executive class and attend the best schools in the world. They have one thing in common: lifestyles inversely related to their earning power!

    You say these are exceptions rather than the rule? Perhaps. But why condemn one while seemingly condoning the other?

    The public sector is unfortunately not alone in this. Wait until you know what the fat cats in the so-called private sector award themselves in the name of executive compensation. I do not here refer to the board-sanctioned performance-based (or lack-thereof) compensations which are legit – or the corporate freebies that makes players outside the corporate suites green with envy; but rather of the countless gravies massed below the scrutiny of the boards and regulators in the name of entitlement.

    Want to check out companies’ annual reports? What do they reveal? Not much – you say?

    Well, those who know can easily point to the single line item called “management expenses” to underline the alliance of the corporatist class against the rest of us. In an era of below par services, shrinking accounts and out-of-control redundancies, there seems to be no stopping the upward spiral of those perks! That is how our self-help republic runs! The few who can manage to extort some privilege from the system consider it their lot to take maximum advantage of things even that means blowing up the ladder for the coming generation. The rest merely bid their time hoping for when their chance will come to repeat the cycle.

    We sure know how greedy the political class is. Theirs’ however, is not any worse than those of other actors in the system hence the Hobbesian struggle that now defines our national lives. If the truth be told – our lawmakers, hardly the only sinners, merely reflect the reality of the self-help culture; the pervasive failure of our institutions – an indictment of the unthinking brood running the affairs country.

    And so it goes: between the overpaid lawmaker and the low level messenger, the difference is hardly about the greed quotient as it is about their access to power and privilege. Both relish the good life and could be expected to act one way or the other to get there. Whether it is in the do-or-die politics; the cheating, the mindless killings and the wave of cultism, they merely express what the American Sociologist, Robert Merton eloquently explained as the typology of individual adaptation when faced with limited means to reaching socially approved goals. This is where institutions become necessary – to create pathways (means) to socially-sanctioned goals and to punish bad behaviour. Here, we not only suffer dearth of institutional capacity, those charged will fixing the problem will rather suffer the indulgence of cornering available opportunities for selves and cohorts. There, in short, lies the tragedy of Nigeria’s myopic elite.

    In our self-help republic, patience is everything. For the politician, it comes to understanding that the four year electoral cycle would barely suffice to create the war chest for the next cycle of elections. The salary being paltry needs an augmentation that only a fat running costs and contractor-tied constituency project can offer.  Why bother to think about overhauling the mortgage system, the credit system and other quality legislative work when there is so limited time to take care of their individual life insurances?

    For the young, out of school graduate being uncharitably described as unemployable, there will obviously enough time to offer endless platitudes. For those brimming with ideas and can’t get finance to push their ideas off the ground, all they need do is wait for the time when the distinguished fellows announce the next round of poverty alleviation schemes. For the budding entrepreneurs who, somehow manage to pass the front door of finance houses and told to bring wife or mum – or both – as collateral, they are well advised to do as they are told; never mind the usurious charges and interests he would be called upon to pay in the end. Same for those lucky to get a reasonably-paying job and needs to pay two years rent upfront to get an apartment, including those desirous of a used car for which they are expected to cough out princely millions, the can find succor either in the word – patience or miracle! For sure, either helps in the Shithole republic. So much for their legitimized heist – and tragically, so much for a country in dearth of leadership.

  • Senate rejects Kaduna $350m World Bank loan request

    The Senate on Thursday declined the approval of $350 million World Bank loan requested by Kaduna State Government.

    The rejection of the loan request followed the presentation and consideration of the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts which asked the upper legislative chamber to turn down the request.

    The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Shehu Sani (Kaduan Central), who presented the report said “the Committee recommended that the Senate do reject the request of $350 million for Kaduna State as contained in the 2015 2018 External Borrowing (Rolling) Plan of Mr. President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.”

    Apart from Sani who heavily criticized the loan request, two other senators from Kaduna State – Suleiman Hunkuyi (Kaduan North) and Danjuma La’ah (Kaduna South) – also opposed the loan.

    The Committee in its conclusion noted that “with the high total debt stock of Kaduna State at the moment, the new borrowing sought, will make the debt service to revenue ratio high, thereby worsening the state government’s ability to meet its other basic obligations to the people and further erode the economic viability of the state.”

    The Committee noted that based on the submissions and interactions with invited government officials, the following observations were made:

    • That the Development Policy Operation, DPO (Budget Support) of $350 million for Kaduna State was approved by World Bank in 2016 and captured in 2016 – 2018 borrowing plan as approved by the National Assembly.

     

    • That the credit facility has an attractive low financing data of 1.25 per cent interest; moratorium of five years and a 25 year maturity tenor.

     

    • That the facility is already captured in the 2016-2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF).

     

    • That according to the latest Debt Management Office figures, Kaduna State has a total debt stock of $232.1 million.

     

    • That approving the current loan request of $350 million for Kaduna State will bring its total debt stock to $582.1 million.

     

    • That if this loan request is approved, the new total debt stock of $582.1 million for Kaduna State will be unsustainable and necessarily attract huge financial burden on the meager federal allocation to the state.

     

     

  • Only NASS Service Commission can explain N13.5m running cost of Senators – RMAFC

    The Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission ( RMAFC ), says only the management of the National Assembly Service Commission can explain the N13.5 million running cost allegedly being enjoyed by each Senator. Mr Ibrahim Mohammed, the Head, Public Relations, said this in a statement on Wednesday in Abuja.

    According to him, the Remuneration Act only covers salary and allowances but not running cost.

    He said that the clarification became imperative in view of the recent revelation by Sen. Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central-APC), who was reported to have disclosed to the public that each senator collects monthly running cost of N13.5 million.

    Sani had said that this was in addition to the monthly salary of N750, 000 prescribed by the “Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office Holders (Salaries and Allowances, etc.) (Amendments) Act 2008.”

    Mohammed said that a closer look at the monthly entitlement of senators reveals that each of them collects salary and allowances of the sum of N1.06 million.

    He said that the figure consists of the following: Basic-N168,866, motor vehicle fueling and maintenance allowance; N126,650, Personal Assistant N42,216.

    “Domestic Staff-N126,650, Entertainment-N50,660,Utilities-N50,660, Newspapers/Periodicals-N25,330, Wardrobe -N42,216, House Maintenance –N8,443 and Constituency-N422,166 respectively.”

    He also said that some allowances were regular, while others were non-regular.“Regular allowances are paid regularly with basic salaries, while non-regular allowances are paid when due.

    “For instance, furniture allowance of N6.079 million and severance gratuity of N6.079 million are paid once every tenure, while motor vehicle loan of N8.1 million is optional which the beneficiary has to offset before leaving office.

    “The payment of running cost is not part of RMAFC mandate, therefore, only the National Assembly can explain it,” he said.
    According to Mohammed, the Law on Salaries and Allowances of Public Office Holders is very clear.

    Mohammed also said that auditing does not fall within the purview of the commission.

    He said that any other payments being enjoyed by any political or public office holder outside those provided in the Remuneration Act of 2008 were not known to the commission.

    He added that the Chief Accounting Officers of the agencies concerned should explain such payments.

    Mohammed advised that Nigerians should avoid misinformation and misrepresentation of facts capable of misleading citizens and members of the international community.

    He said that they could access the actual details of the present remuneration package for Political, Public and Judicial Office holders in Nigeria published on its website: www.rmafc.gov.ng.
    NAN

  • Shehu Sani’s gauntlet!

    Since the day Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna State in the upper chamber, exposed the scandalously humongous salaries and obscene allowances that members of the National Assembly have allocated to themselves outside the law and which they take home every month, Nigerians have not hidden their anger and disgust. And justifiably so, I might add, for apart from their N750,000 monthly salary, each senator also takes home a princely sum of N13.5 million as “running cost,” plus N200 million annually for so-called “constituency projects.”

    Our anger and sadness are justifiable when even the official national minimum wage of N18,000 is not paid as at when due. Even though many states owe their workers several months’ salaries, their elected legislators are wallowing in obscene sybaritic splendor without the slightest care or compassion for the people that they claim to represent. Since this revelation, the National Assembly has come up for deserved flagellation. For Senator Sani, spilling the beans on what our senators take home is predicated on “the need to break the culture of secrecy surrounding the activities of the National Assembly because it had given the parliament a bad name…” And it is difficult not to agree with him, after all, if we are running a democratic system that is, technically speaking, accountable to the ruled, then revealing how much we spend on our elected officials should not be a big issue.

    But beyond this revelation, however, is that the intrepid senator has also thrown down the gauntlet: that is, that it may not be the National Assembly alone that is guilty of opacity in its finances, sybaritic excesses and unaccountability, and that we must beam the searchlight on others arms and tiers of the government as well. In an interview he granted to an FM Radio in Ibadan and reported in thenationonline.net of March 19, he said: “Now that Nigerians know what the senators are earning, it is time for them to also ask what is happening in the presidency, the judiciary and the other arms of government.” My take on this is that, righteous as our indignation on the excesses of the National Assembly may be, focusing our anger and disgust on this branch of the government alone misses the point! What goes on within the supposedly hallowed precincts of the national legislature is but only a tip of the iceberg. And the senator exhorts us further: “I will appeal to Nigerians to now shift focus to the governors, the ministers, those in the presidency, the SGF, the Chief of Staff to the president, and NNPC GMD, to ask them to say publicly what they earn monthly.” That is a serious challenge.

    Let the truth be told: we don’t have a clue how much ministers, special advisers, special assistants and the retinue of presidential aides earn as monthly salaries and allowances and how much they pocket as monthly “running costs.” Every arm of the government is opaque as relates to expenditure and financial matters. All we know is that the cost of running our government is so prohibitively high it is actually sinful. Annually, not less than 70 percent of the budget goes to recurrent expenditure, which means payment of salaries and other emoluments of our government officials and workers. What this means is that every year we spend 70 percent of annual appropriations paying the salaries and allowances of government officials and workers, less than one percent of the population, to help us spend the remaining 30 percent on 180 million Nigerians! Again, much of the remaining 30 percent to be spent on the nearly 200 million Nigerians would still be shamelessly plundered by civil servants and politicians, all in the name of organizing bogus seminars, workshops, retreats, legislative oversight functions and such like.

    Mallam Nasir El-Rufai provides a tiny glimpse of what federal ministers enjoy and whose actual costs in monthly expenditures for their offices is not known. On page 199 of his book, The Accidental Public Servant, he revealed what happened immediately after his swearing-in as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. “As I came out of the Executive Chambers that evening on July 16, 2003, two men approached me. One was in a black suit and introduced himself as Widi Liman, my security officer. The other, in flowing agbada, said he was Sagir Hamidu and in charge of protocol. They showed me my convoy of four vehicles…my official car and Isa the driver, accompanied by a police outrider on a motorbike, plus two other vehicles, one with a flashing siren, and the other full of bodyguards. This caught me completely off guard.” If this is just a glimpse of what a minister enjoys, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. But note that these do not include a minister’s retinue of aides, advisers and personal assistants, domestic staff and others, all of which must cost the nation huge monthly sums.

    Now you may understand why Nigeria is consistently ranked near the bottom in all UNDP annual reports when most of its resources are expended on satisfying the sybaritic excesses of its political and technocratic elites?

    Senator Shehu Sani has done us a world of favour by his bold exposition but has also thrown down the gauntlet; he has challenged us “to now shift focus to the governors, the ministers, those in the presidency, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Chief of Staff to the president, and NNPC GMD, to ask them to say publicly what they earn monthly.” Nigerians are not afraid to do this, but the reality, if we must be honest, is that apart from showing our righteous indignation (through protests, agitations, advocacy, etc, which normally peter out after a few days), there is pretty little that we can do by way of actionable policy. Our noisy agitations would not change the insensate and de-sensitized minds that populate the National Assembly, and neither are we in any position to stem the excesses in the executive branch.

    In that case, the onus is on President Muhammadu Buhari, with all the constitutional and executive powers, resources and influence at his disposal, to rescue the nation from this debilitating system. He can mobilize the masses of the people behind him for this noble cause, and I bet that Nigerians in their 10s of millions are angry and hungry enough to rise in support of him. He is in the best and vantage position to rescue us from the depredations of our political and technocratic slave-masters. Unless he addresses the matter squarely and with the seriousness it deserves, his much vaunted signature anti-corruption war and whatever else he thinks he has achieved will fade into nothingness.

    Fellow Nigerians, Senator Shehu Sani has thrown down the gauntlet, let us now rise in unison to encourage the president to pick it up and stand boldly with Nigerians for the sake of posterity. This nation cannot rise to its full stature and take its rightful place in the world if this nation-wrecking impunity is left unchecked. We need a serious dialogue on how to totally restructure and repackage the entire architecture of politics and governance to make it address our developmental challenges. As presently configured and being operated, Nigeria is clearly rigged against progress and performance.

     

    • Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.

  • Shehu Sani: APC lacks right to seek votes in 2019 if killings continue

    Senator Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central) has warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) it will be difficult to seek for votes in 2019 if herdsmen killings in different parts of the country continue.

    He stated any party that cannot guarantee peace and stability of a nation lacks the moral right to seek votes again.

    Sani spoke at the 5th Development Summit of the Olalekan Olomide Platform for Development yesterday.

    He called on the leadership of the party to urgently intensify effort in the various crises before it is too late.

    “We must honestly admit that there are successes achieved by this administration but the mindless killings, violence and blood shedding in most states of the federation is mind boggling.

    “If our party cannot guarantee the peace and stability, we factually have given up our moral right to ask people to vote for us into power again.”

    He urged the South West region to speak with one voice and have a black and white agreement with the ruling party.

    “The Southwest is the heartbeat of the APC and if by chance we suffered a stroke here, that is the end of the story.

    “The region should put its house in order and have a written agreement with the ruling party that after supporting the party in 2019, it is the turn of the region.

    “This is important because the political class is not gentlemen and they don’t respect a gentleman agreement.”

  • Shehu Sani and senators’ salaries

    Sir: When former CBN governor now Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II, told us some years back that a quarter of our annual budget was spent on the National Assembly, many did not believe him and tagged him a rabble rouser and attention seeker. But the recent revelations about senators’ salaries and allowances by Senator Shehu Sani have proven Sanusi right. He revealed that a senator collects N13 million monthly for running costs which must receipted, N700,000 for salary and allowances and N200 million worth of constituency projects annually. However, the disclosure by the senator does not cover allowances for cars, housing, wardrobe, furniture, etc. which runs into several millions of naira.

    It is a tragic irony that while we have the largest concentration of poor people in the world, our lawmakers are arguably the highest paid in the world. Why can’t they borrow a leaf from their counterparts in Britain, the House of Lords, where each lawmaker earns only 150 pounds (about N250,000) per sitting? How can we be paying corrupt politicians and thieving bureaucrats millions of naira as salaries and allowances in a country where no doctor, lawyer, engineer, university lecturer or any professional of any hue earns anything close to that amount monthly? How can we expect to become a great power when for so many years till date, the Nigerian budget has been overwhelmingly tilted in favour of recurrent expenditure rather than capital expenditure?

    In most advanced climes, the private sector pays more than the public sector because remuneration is based on productivity and the public sector is seen as a place to serve and make an impact not as a channel to become rich. In Nigeria, the reverse is the case. Public service is a do-or-die thing because it is viewed by many as a cheap avenue to enrich self.

    If only on the grounds of productivity, I sincerely do not think that our lawmakers deserve to earn such humongous sums as salaries and allowances. Most of these senators do not have constituency offices. They do not hold town hall meetings and some rarely visit their home states. Secondly, the quality of debate in the Senate is very poor and often characterized by absentee and sleeping senators during plenary. Despite their lavish salaries, members are often accused of soliciting and collecting bribes to pass bills and from agencies that they oversee.

    One knotty issue that baffles and defies logic is the issue of constituency projects for lawmakers. Just like their name implies, lawmakers all over the world make laws, carry out oversight functions, and are vested with the power of appropriation while it is the role of the executive to implement projects. The earlier we do away with this democratic aberration, the better for our treasury.

    I commend the courage of Senator Shehu Sani in making this disclosure unlike the Twitter senator, who is adept at playing the ostrich and epitomizes the phrase “all talk and no action”.

    The way forward is to make law-making a part-time job that pays allowances per sitting just as we had it in the First Republic. We should also do away with our current bi-cameral legislature in favour of a unicameral legislature so as to save costs and reduce our recurrent expenditure.

     

    • Peter Ovie Akus,

    Ifo, Ogun State.

  • Kaduna APC crisis: el-Rufai slams N2bn suit on Shehu Sani

    Kaduna APC crisis: el-Rufai slams N2bn suit on Shehu Sani

    The crisis rocking the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna State, yesterday took a twist after Governor Nasir El-Rufai dragged Senator Shehu Sani before the state High Court in a defamation suit.

    El-Rufai wants N2billion as damages from Sani – N500million for each of the four attacks the defendant allegedly launched against him.

    Sani represents Kaduna Central in the Senate.

    He is a fierce critic of the governor.

    El-Rufai is seeking compensation for the injury allegedly suffered as a result of “the malicious statements” made by Senator Sani through the mass media to humiliate him and defame his integrity by calling him a drunk, loose cannon and an embarrassment to President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Among other reliefs, Governor El-Rufai is seeking a declaration that the derogatory remarks made against him by Senator Sani are totally false and injurious to his person in the eyes of the public.

  • Insecurity: We are losing essence of being in government – Sani

    Insecurity: We are losing essence of being in government – Sani

    The Senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, on Tuesday lamented the takeover of a local government in his constituency by gunmen.

    Senator Sani said Birnin Gwari local government area which borders Zamfara, Kebbi and Niger States has been under the siege of armed herdsmen for over two years.

    He told the Senate that the inability of government to flush out the armed men is pushing government officials to lose the essence of being in government.

    The Kaduna Central lawmaker, who came under order 43(personal explanation), said government must do the needful in the interest of the people.

    Sani said: “I have an issue in a local government in one of my constituency. It is called Birnin Gwari local government area. This local government borders Zamfara, Kebbi, and Niger States. This local government in the last two to three years has been under siege of armed herdsmen and bandits.

    “Bandits have made life intolerable to the people of that part of the state. Many villages in this local government have been sacked, farmers don’t go to their farms any longer and many of the citizens reside in that local government are now in the capital.

    “Of concern is the fact that killings and abduction have become a daily affair. It is one issue that has not been able to get the national attention.

    “Just few days ago, about seven persons were killed, and continually the killings have been so on a daily basis. Even the media, don’t take much time to give it a space in their pages of newspapers.

    “I am deeply concerned that the government is losing the grip that we cannot guarantee the safety of lives and property in this country. I think we have lost the essence of our being in government.

    “Everyday, this country is becoming a theater of war, you see bodies of victims killed, dismembered and shared on social media. There is nowhere in Africa today where you see these pictures and images been shared everyday.”

     

     

  • Senate gets committee on Electoral Act

    Senate gets committee on Electoral Act

    Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on Thursday announced a six-man committee to reconcile the Senate’s version of the amended Electoral Act with the version passed by the House of Representatives.

    The Senate’s conference committee has the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Senator Suleiman Nazif, as chairman.

    Other members of the committee are – Senators Shehu Sani, Biodun Olujimi, Hope Uzodinma, Dino Melaye and Peter Nwaoboshi.

    The committee is expected to meet with the House of Representatives to harmonise the version of the amended electoral bill before being sent to President Muhammadu Buhari for his assent.

    The Senate had in 2017 passed an amended version of the 2010 Electoral Act.

    While the House of Representatives had on Tuesday amended the Electoral Act to change the 2019 general elections time table.

    This came barely a month after the INEC released the time table for the general elections.

    With the amendment, the National Assembly election will take place first, followed by gubernatorial and state assembly polls.

    The presidential election will be conducted last.

    The amendment was made at the Committee of the whole House, presided over by the Deputy Speaker, Yussuff Lasun.