In this interview with OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, speaks on the Senate’s probe of EFCC Chairman over N2trillion seized funds, his separate visits to President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu on peace mission and dispels insinuations that the Senate is a factory for manufacturing bills… Excerpts:
What do you make of Senate’s probe of EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde?
I think there were some procedural lapses there. But I don’t want to believe it was deliberate because there is no way you can cut corners or use an institution like the Senate to settle personal scores, it doesn’t work that way. After all, whatever decision you take has to be debated on the floor of the house and it has to be passed. So, even if it is a committee’s recommendation, after the committee’s works, it has to be presented in plenary and a simple majority will have to agree with the content of the report before the report becomes acceptable. I am not used to talking anyhow on these issues because the end justifies the means. And if you go and make noise all over, you should know that all that noise will have to be accepted by the majority of the Senate before it becomes anything. So, even if the Committee does the work and the Senate rejects it, that’s the end of the report. Why make an issue out of it?
And again, this country belongs to all of us. Let us concentrate on ideas and things that will move this country forward. As far as I am concerned, these are trivialities. They do not add value to governance or the way Nigeria is. I don’t want to be discussing events; I want to be discussing ideas, issues and things that will move this country forward. Even if the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions finishes its work, it must come to the Senate. The Senate will decide based on simple majority. If it gets to voice vote in the beginning and it is not acceptable, the Senate will be divided on that particular issue to know who voted for and against it. But like I said, I observed some procedural errors there and we will take appropriate steps.
What are those procedural errors?
Don’t push me on that. I say what I want to say. You can’t use your own trick to arm twist me.
Is it true that you led other Senators to see the President on the crisis in the Senate?
I am the Senate Leader of this 8th Senate for now. My duties are three: one, to lead the legislative business of the Senate; two, to prepare the schedules of the Senate; three, to liaise with other committees. I am supposed to be the presenter of all government bills. Is it because people see me in the (Presidential) Villa? In fact, I am supposed to be in the Villa almost every day. My going to Villa is not supposed to be a big deal. Yes, there are some issues we had after the inauguration of the Senate; the issue of the leadership of the Senate with the party and all that. But as you can see we have put all those issues behind and moved forward. The President has communicated several times to the Senate, who did he address the letter to? He writes not only ‘Senate President’ but he puts ‘Bukola Saraki’. That is the tradition. We have moved beyond that. I go to the Villa so often because we compare notes on bills that are going to come including improving on this relationship. Senators are supposed to be interacting with the President at personal level. We have been doing that in the previous leadership and that is what took us there; and of course to improve on the relationship.
What about your visit to the former Governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu?
I have two political mentors: the President and Asiwaju himself. We have been with this President hoping for his presidency from 2003 in APP before it became ANPP. So, I am not a stranger to Buhari. I have been visiting him in Kaduna. I travel from Abuja to Kaduna to visit him in his house. I have been going there before now for the past 12 years.
So also is my visit to Tinubu. We developed a very close relationship and he is one of the people I respect and appreciate. I look at him as my mentor. During his 60th birthday, he invited 60 people that were close to him and I was one of them. What if I decide to stay in Tinubu’s house?
How soon will the Senate constitute its Standing Committees?
People are writing that Saraki is constituting committees in London but Saraki has no business constituting committees. It is the responsibility of Selection Committee chaired by him. So, if he is the Chairman, he is the owner of the Committee? It doesn’t work that way. Right now, I am busy trying to tabulate. I issued a form that members would fill, showing the preference of the Committee of their choice. And they didn’t submit it to the Senate President; it was submitted to my office. All of them are in my custody. And what I am trying to do now is to sort out and tabulate accordingly. That was why we asked the senators to also include their CVs to know their areas of capability. It doesn’t matter when the Committees are constituted but you know that we are on recess. It doesn’t matter who becomes what. Every senator is qualified, not only to chair a committee but to also lead the Senate. For instance, Saraki did not contest to be Senate President; he contested to be a senator.
How would you react to concerns in some quarters that between the inauguration of the 8th Senate on June 9 and now, the Senate has not passed a single bill?
How can you pass a bill in 24 days? Bill is not joke. And when you talk about bill, the work of the National Assembly is not passing bills alone. Go and look at the Constitution. That is not only our work. And because of the pressure you people put on us, in the ongoing Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) conference, another complaint has started because we create double agencies. The lawyers particularly mentioned about an agency that is awaiting presidential assent to be an agency and there is already an existing agency.
So, you have some of the agencies overlapping. What bill do you want me to pass that I didn’t pass? What you need more is good governance, looking at the existing laws to make them more effective and removing some of these laws that are not necessary. But unfortunately, people say senators just sit down without passing bills. That is not only our work. This is an institution that is continuous but not a factory for bills. We are not manufacturers of bills.
And even if you are manufacturing, there are some time you shut down the manufacturing business. You are supposed to be talking about what is before the Senate that needs to be done that has not been done. For example, you as a Nigerian, you are a part of the Nigeria project. If there is any bill that the Senate is supposed to pass, I will be glad as Senate Leader to get that idea from you and I will quickly put it into bill and pursue it for the interest of Nigerians. We have several bills that have already been passed for First Reading. I think about 10 of them.
The 7th Senate passed 46 bills in one day. Then the press came out to say we passed 46 bills in 10 minutes. You say we are not passing bills, we passed 46, you say we are over speeding. Now, the same press is saying since June we didn’t pass any bill. How can you reconcile these two? This is not fair.
