National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), a US based pro-democracy group, has asked Senate President Godswill Akpabio to resign from office over alleged “lacklustre handling” of the upper legislative chamber.
In a statement on Tuesday, Lloyd Ukwu, executive director of NADECO USA, said Akpabio begins plenary late and does not follow its order.
According to the senate rules, plenary is scheduled for 10 am but most times it does not begin until 10:30 am or 11 am.
Ukwu accused the senate president of not giving the senators enough time to study important bills to enable an informed debate on them.
“Akpabio is fond of keeping communications from the president which are supposed to be read during announcement time till the end of plenary like he recently did when he announced the last three ministerial nominees by the president towards the tail end of plenary,” he said.
“Only recently, the chief whip of the Senate, Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume (APC – Borno South) and Senator Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo (SDP – Nasarawa South) openly accused Akpabio of not giving senators adequate opportunity to interrogate and scrutinize bills, especially money bills, and warned that history would judge him for approving executive requests and passing important legislations posthaste.
“Akpabio has equally shown lack of empathy for poor and suffering Nigerian masses when he recently turned a ‘let Nigerians breathe’ comment by a senator into a pun which attracted a mocking laughter from his colleagues during plenary.
“For fear of being impeached, he recently caused an amendment to be made to the senate standing rules to the effect that no first term senator is qualified to vie for the position of presiding officer, a move which clearly violates relevant sections of the constitution which confers powers on senators to freely choose presiding officers at their first sitting irrespective of ranking.”
Eseme Eyiboh, spokesperson of Akpabio, has been contacted and is yet to react to the group’s claims.