{"id":4562,"date":"2015-03-12T10:40:15","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T10:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4562"},"modified":"2015-03-12T10:40:15","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T10:40:15","slug":"apc-senators-walk-out-as-senate-clears-obanikoro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=4562","title":{"rendered":"APC senators walk out as Senate clears Obanikoro"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Musiliu<\/a>
Musiliu Obanikoro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed eight ministerial nominees, including a former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro.<\/p>\n

Seven of the nominees had a smooth sail during the session but when it was Obanikoro\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 turn,\u00a0\u00a0 the All Progressives Congress senators kicked and cited reasons why he should not be considered for a ministerial appointment.<\/p>\n

Among their reasons were that the nominee from Lagos State\u00a0\u00a0 had been implicated in \u201cvery sensitive issues that touch on national interest,\u201d and court cases, including one by\u00a0\u00a0 a Peoples Democratic Party member, Kemi Lawal, which restrained the Senate from confirming him.<\/p>\n

But Senate President, David Mark, ruled them out of order\u00a0\u00a0 and insisted that\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 he had not been served any court order\u00a0\u00a0 restraining the Senate from confirming Obanikoro, who is also a former PDP governorship aspirant for Lagos State.<\/p>\n

The APC senators, who vehemently raised their opposition to the confirmation of the former minister\u00a0\u00a0 were Bukola Saraki,\u00a0\u00a0 Olugbenga Ashafa, Babajide Omoworare,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 George Akume, Olubunmi Adetunmbi, Ali Ndume\u00a0\u00a0 and Ganiyu Solomon.<\/p>\n

Another APC lawmaker, Mudashiru Hussain, nearly threw caution to the wind when he attempted to\u00a0\u00a0 rush at a PDP senator,\u00a0\u00a0 Smart Adeyemi,\u00a0\u00a0 for allegedly distrupting the opposition lawmakers\u2019 arguments on why Obanikoro should not be cleared.<\/p>\n

It took the timely intervention of some APC senators sitting close to Hussain to stop him from doing so.<\/p>\n

Angered by the fact that Mark ruled them out of order,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 all the APC senators walked out of the chamber and addressed a news conference where they expressed their disappointment at the Senate leadership\u2019s handling of the issue.<\/p>\n

In spite of the walkout by the APC lawmakers, Mark went ahead to rule on the voice votes of the PDP senators for the confirmation of Obanikoro and the other nominees as ministers.<\/p>\n

The nominees, who received the special privilege of \u2018take a bow\u2019 were\u00a0\u00a0 Hauwa Lawan, (Jigawa); Kenneth Kobani (Rivers) and Joel Ikenya, (Taraba).<\/p>\n

The\u00a0\u00a0 others who were screened last week but were confirmed on Wednesday are\u00a0\u00a0 Patricia Akwashiki (Nasarawa);\u00a0\u00a0 Nicholas\u00a0\u00a0 Ada (Benue);\u00a0\u00a0 Augustine Akobundu (Abia) and\u00a0\u00a0 Fidelis Nwankwo (Ebonyi).<\/p>\n

At the news conference, the spokesperson for the APC caucus, Babafemi Ojudu,\u00a0\u00a0 said, \u201cWe found it incumbent on us to let Nigerians know what our opinions are on this matter but the Senate President would not listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, the leader of the caucus, George Akume, said it was regrettable that\u00a0\u00a0 Senate leadership which they had in\u00a0\u00a0 the past supported,\u00a0\u00a0 did not respect their view on the case of Obanikoro.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThe Senate, in its sitting today(Wednesday), was rancorous and acrimonious\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 because of one nominee who has been a senator before and had also been passed as a minister and ambassador.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenators from Lagos had never raised objection to his earlier nomination and confirmation in the past but something happened after he became the minister of State for Defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is alleged to have participated in the massive rigging of the Ekiti governorship election in June last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe alleged action, is a breach of the constitution. In a civilised world, his name should not have come up for screening in the first place. Hence, we are all opposed to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akume argued that Mark, by his action, had altered the tradition of the Senate which states that any nominee rejected by at least two senators from his state of origin, should not be cleared.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cThe three senators from Lagos opposed to the nomination of Obanikoro but the Senate President and his PDP colleagues decided to take the advantage of their numbers to override what is supposed to be basically a very straight forward issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wonder whether we want to grow democracy in this country or whether we want to destroy it. Rule of the senate forbids it not to act on any issue in court but the Senate leadership had ignored this.<\/p>\n

\u201cNigerians are being deceived by the behaviour of the senate. They do not want to listen to us and this is highly unfortunate and we are very disappointed in the action of our leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the senate leadership, at a separate news conference by its spokesperson, Eyinnaya Abaribe, described the APC senators allegations against Obanikoro as unfounded.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cIn our law and the constitution of Nigeria, anything that is a mere allegation that is not a court decision is nothing but a mere allegation.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in Nigeria is deemed to be innocent until proven guilty and even the Senators who addressed the press conference and spoke about the qualification or otherwise of Obanikoro are enjoying this privilege because some of them have EFCC cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are still in the Senate because of this privilege of being innocent until proven guilty and so they cannot go to a press conference, and try to convict somebody when the person has not been convicted by a court of law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey cannot enjoy that privilege themselves and sit in this senate and then turn around and now say that somebody else cannot enjoy that privilege.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe laws of Nigeria are very clear; you are innocent until proven guilty, so that is what played out on the floor of the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Senate, having known that this is the laws of Nigeria, and this is the constitution of Nigeria that every Nigerian is entitled to this privilege, went ahead to do what it is supposed to by law do which is somebody that is on the floor of the Senate who has not been convicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil somebody is convicted by a court, then his employer will determine what to do with him; the Senate is not a court of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abaribe also argued that the senators formed a quorum\u00a0\u00a0 when the fate of the nominees were determined.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the news conference by the APC caucus, a young man believed to be the son of Obanikoro, drew the anger of\u00a0\u00a0 Oluremi Tinubu, at the lobby of the National Assembly.<\/p>\n

Tinubu was said to have drawn people\u2019s attention to what she called the \u2018uncultured\u2019 behaviour of the young man, who\u00a0\u00a0 insisted that he did not utter any word against her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed eight ministerial nominees, including a former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro. Seven of the nominees had a smooth sail during the session but when it was Obanikoro\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 turn,\u00a0\u00a0 the All Progressives Congress senators kicked and cited reasons why he should not be considered for a ministerial appointment. Among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Musiliu-Obanikoro-360x2251.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1bA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4562\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}