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20 SENATE SUB-COMMITTEES DELAYING 2018 BUDGET – SARAKI
The President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, at the
plenary on Thursday, insisted on today’s (Friday) deadline issued to standing
committees to represent their reports on the 2018 budgets proposed by the
Federal Government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies. He said the deadline
would not be extended, noting that the Senate would not be held to ransom by
the 20 sub-committees that had yet to present their reports to the Committee on
Appropriations. “My meeting with the Chairman of the Committee on
Appropriations as of Wednesday showed that a number of committees have not
submitted their reports. As much as possible, we have tried not to name names,
but we have no alternative than to list these committees so that the chairmen
can know that they are holding all of us back,” he stated. Saraki said the
defaulting committees were Defence, Army, Air Force, Navy, Industry, Federal
Capital Territory, States and Local Governments, Culture and Tourism, Petroleum
(Downstream), Petroleum (Upstream), Niger Delta and Sustainable Development
Goals.
Others are Primary Health and Communicable Diseases,
Health, Tertiary Institutions and TETFUND, Capital Market, Federal Roads
Maintenance Agency, Works, Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy; and
National Cooperation and Integration. The National Assembly had set April 24
for the passage of the budget.
THISDAY
SENATORS IN ROWDY SESSION AFTER ABARIBE CALLS BUHARI
INCOMPETENT
It was a rowdy session in the Senate yesterday following
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe’s description of President Muhammadu Buhari as
“incompetent” in his handling of clashes between farmers and herdsmen. Abaribe
had used the word while reacting to Buhari’s comments made in London last
Wednesday when the president said the killer herdsmen were not Nigerians but
militias trained by the late Muammar Gadaffi of Libya. Abaribe, in a motion
queried why Buhari as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was incapable of
protecting Nigeria from foreign invasion. He also wondered why the president,
Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, and the Minister of Defence,
Brigadier General Mansur Dan Ali (rtd), have propounded different reasons for
the recurring clashes. Idris had blamed the clashes on the anti-grazing laws
passed by some of the affected states, while the minister had said they were
caused by the blockage of grazing routes. “Yesterday (Wednesday) in London, the
President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria said the
killings are as a result of the people who were trained by the late Gaddafi,
and so implying that these people doing these killings in Nigeria are from
outside the country.
“When a commander-in-chief cannot take care of invaders
invading Nigeria, why is he still a commander-in-chief? Why do we continue to
indulge this president (such) that everywhere he goes, he tells everyone
outside this country that he is totally incompetent? Because it is obvious…,”
Abaribe added. At this point, his presentation was interrupted by shouts of
‘point of order’ by several senators who raised their hands, requesting
permission from the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to register their
protest. It took a few minutes for calm to be restored to the chamber. The
Majority Leader, Senator Ahmed Lawan, who first took the floor, expressed
displeasure at Abaribe’s choice of words, which he said disrespected the
president. Lawan demanded that Abaribe should withdraw the statement and
apologise to the chamber. Saraki, backing Lawan’s position, said offensive
words must not be used by senators. Abaribe apologized to his colleagues, but
said he simply interpreted the words used by Buhari himself. However, Ekiti
State Governor, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has said that President Buhari was becoming
an embarrassment to Nigerians, urging his handlers to desist from allowing him
to speak extempore. Fayose said President Buhari should rather face the reality
of his government’s failure to secure the lives and properties of Nigerians as
well as its seeming culpability in the herdsmen killings instead of going to
foreign lands to advertise his cluelessness by blaming the dead.
VANGUARD
HERDSMEN KILL 66 IN BENUE, TARABA; SCORES IN ZAMFARA
No fewer than 66 persons were on Wednesday night killed
in Benue and Taraba states by gunmen suspected to be herdsmen, with the attacks
continuing yesterday. Scores of others were also killed in Zamfara communities,
following a midnight attack by suspected herdsmen. While 41, according to
residents, were killed in separate attacks on communities in Logo and Ukum
local government areas of Benue State, 25 were slaughtered at Jandeikyula
village in Wukari Local Government Area of Taraba State. The killings in Taraba
prompted the governor, Darius Ishaku, to align with former Chief of Army Staff
and Defence Minister, Lt. General T.Y. Danjuma, asking the people to rise and
defend themselves. The residents in the Benue communities also said the death
toll may rise sharply in the coming hours, as more bodies were still being
removed from nearby bushes. Among the injured victims of the latest attack was
70-year-old Mama Uhaen Ndiisaa, mother of a former chairman of Logo Local
Government Area, Mr. Terhemen Ndiisaa, of Peoples Democratic Party.
The latest attacks came a day after 15 people were killed
by gunmen said to be wearing military uniform. “The first attack happened in
Tse Hwer in Ukemberyge/Tsweray Council Ward in Logo Local Government around
6:30 p.m. to this morning,” said a senior state government official. He said he
had been warned by federal authorities for talking to the media in the past.
“Some people are saying their families are missing, but we haven’t been able to
confirm how many exactly,’’ he said. ‘’When they arrived at about 6:00 p.m. in
Jande-Ikyura in Ukum Local Government Area, the gunmen appeared determined to
wipe out the entire community, said another resident of the area who said he
had been to the village yesterday morning to witness the aftermath.
THISDAY
2019: PDP WON’T ACCEPT MANIPULATED RESULT, SAYS
SECONDUS
The People’s Democratic Party yesterday said it would not
accept the outcome of the 2019 general election if it was manipulated through
the use of technology. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had
expressed worry over growing cases of technology-related interferences in
election results when it hosted a three-day international conference on the use
of technology in the conduct of elections this week. But the PDP National
Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, told a delegation of the European Union (EU)
Ambassadors to Nigeria led by Ambassador Ketil Karlsen that the party demands
nothing but free and fair elections from INEC in 2019. “We want to assure you
that we are law abiding citizens and follow constitution as we want to see this
election free and fair and if they use technology to manipulate it, it will
bring problem. Let it be a technology that will deliver a free and fair,
transparent election. We urge INEC to keep by the rule of the law,” Secondus
demanded.
He alleged that the ruling All Progressives Congress
wants to truncate the nation’s democracy, adding that INEC and security
agencies operate as arms of the ruling party. Ambassador Karlsen had said the
purpose of the visit was to ensure peaceful conduct of elections in Nigeria in
2019.
NEW TELEGRAPH
I WAS TORTURED TO FRAME SENATOR SHEHU SANI – KADUNA
CIVILIAN JTF LEADER
Garba Isa, a member of a Kaduna Civilian JTF who is in
the centre of the Murder case controversy against Senator Shehu Sani of one
Lawan Maiduna has alleged that the Military forced him to implicate the
Senator. Isa told newsmen in Kano yesterday that, ” I was not in Kaduna but
received calls that the Military are looking for me on an issue so when I went
back I was at our office in Kabala Doki when the military came and asked me to
come with them”. He said, “The Military told me that they arrested some
suspects and I alongside another person we should come in our position as JTF
to verified their identity at Badarawa so after an inquiry they allowed the
other person to go and asked me to follow them. They now took me to Kukwa Ahmed
Aruwa Firm, and kept me there; I was there when a Military Captain came and
left there after he sent an intelligent officer who came and told me that I was
the one who killed Lawan Bakin Ruwa. I told them as a civilian JTF how can I
killed anybody, they started torturing me that I most accept that I’m the one
who killed him and Senator Shehu Sani was the one who contracts us to do it”.
Garba added, “The Military at the firm insisted that I
most accept that Senator Shehu Sani gave Bashir Hamadada money to pay us for
the killing of Lawan and I told them I neither knew Bashir no Lawan they are
talking about”. Garba Isa added that he spent two weeks with the military but
still refused to implicate Senator Shehu Sani “and later we were transferred to
the Kaduna State CID were I spent almost a month and from where I was taken to
Prison”. He said it was at a Kaduna State High Court that he got his bail but
his right-hand side is now having serious injuries making him to go on
treatment because of the military torture. All efforts to hear from the
Military Command in Kaduna proved abortive.
PUNCH
COURT REJECTS OMO-AGEGE’S BID TO STOP SENATE
SUSPENSION
The Federal High Court in Abuja has rejected an ex parte
application filed by the lawmaker representing Delta Central in the Senate,
Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, to stop his suspension by the Senate. He had, on April
3, filed the ex-parte application before Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, asking the
court to order that “all further proceedings against the plaintiff (the
Senator) in respect of the allegations referred to the 1st defendant’s (Senate)
Committee for Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition” be halted pending the
hearing and determination of his main suit. Omo-Agege asked the court to order
parties to the main suit, earlier filed on March 26, 2018, “not to consider,
act on or give effect to any recommendation, resolution or decision of the 1st
respondent’s (Senate) Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition.” But
the Senate, on Thursday suspended the Senator for 90 legislative days for his
comments that the amendment to the Electoral Act 2010 to reorder the sequence
of polls in a general election was targeted at President Muhammadu Buhari.
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