President Muhammadu Buhari has been given a six-week ultimatum to tackle the security challenges bedeviling the country or face impeachment by Nigeria’s upper legislative body, the Senate.
The Senators, numbering about 40 from the opposition political parties, who staged a walkout from the chambers during Wednesday’s plenary in Abuja, also threatened to commence impeachment proceedings against President Buhari if he fails to address the insecurity in the country within the period given to him.
The Minority Leader of the Senate, Senator Philip Aduda, told journalists in Abuja shortly after staging the walkout with his colleagues that the Senate President Ahmad Lawan, who presided over the plenary, declined his request to discuss the security situation in the country and the impeachment of President Buhari.
The Senators, who were displeased by the action of the Senate President, took turns to walk out of the legislative chamber, leaving behind all the Senators elected on the platforms of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
Speaking on the walkout of the legislative chamber by his colleagues, a former Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, said that the Federal Government had not taken decisive measures to stem the tide of insecurity.
Abaribe told Channels Television in an interview on Wednesday in Abuja that Nigeria was in a state of incompetence, following the worsening insecurity in the country.
It will be recalled that the terrorists have continued to launch series of attacks with the recent one in Abuja on Monday night where at least three soldiers were killed when the gunmen ambushed the Presidential Brigade Guards, while on patrol along the Kubwa-Bwari Road in Abuja.
Abaribe said that the Senate had been branded as a ‘compliant Senate’ because “it approves everything brought to it by the Executive arm”.
“The bottom line today that we have reached is that we are in a state of sheer incompetence. There is no other way you can mention it,” he said.
Reacting to the planned security meeting by the President with service chiefs on Thursday, Abaribe said that the President would only gather the service chiefs wherever an attack happens, wondering about the outcome of previously security meetings held.
“How many security meetings have we had? Every time something happens, you gather all of them and say you are going to have another security meeting. Nothing comes out of it, it gets worse.
“Asking the rest of us to just fold our hands for this administration to derail this country, I don’t think it is in anybody’s interest.
“We have seen that they can no longer do anything. How could a President, after what happened in Kuje Prison, go there and let the whole world know (that) something is wrong. What has happened since then?” he said.
Reacting to the ultimatum given to President Buhari by the Senators, the presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, said that the senators were merely playing to the gallery and that there was not much they would do after the drama which played out in the legislative chamber.
“I think it was just bravado, and sadly, security is not something you subject to bravado.
“You don’t begin to issue flippant ultimatums in something that is a matter of life and death,” Adesina said.
According to Adesina, those who spoke today (Wednesday) are the minority of minorities, they will have their say as is needful in a democracy, but it will not go beyond that.”
“They know in their heart of hearts that they cannot achieve what they are saying, they are just wasting the country’s time, wasting the time of the Upper Chamber of the National Assembly, they know that they cannot achieve it.
“The truth is that in this kind of scenario, minority will always have its say while the majority will have its way,” Adesina said.
GIK/APA