The incumbent president of the senate, Godswill Akpabio, and his predecessor, Ahmad Lawan, openly disagree over the best time to start senate plenary
There was a mild argument on the floor of the Senate between the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio and the immediate past Senate President, Ahmad Lawan over a move to adjust commencement time for plenary.
This was prompted by a motion sponsored by the Leader of the Senate, Opeyemi Bamidele (APC, Ekiti Central) during Thursday’s plenary on the need for the Senate to amend its standing orders in order to adjust its sitting time as well as to establish an additional committee which will have its functions and jurisdictions reflected in the rule book.
Senator Bamidele who noted that the standing orders was amended in 2023 to accommodate issues that will make the rules dynamic to facilitate effective legislative processes, also stressed the importance to establish an additional committee on patriation amd repatriation by amending order 8(2) to reflect current realities.
He said that the amendment of the plenary sitting time will synchronise with that of the House of Representatives, explaining that committee activities like public hearings would hold between 9.00 am and 11.00 am before or from 3.00 pm – 6.00 pm after plenary.
Following the presentation of this motion, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi (PDP, Kebbi North) argued that the committee on foreign affairs could be expanded to handle the emergent issues rather creating additional committees. “The committee on foreign affairs should be expanded to foreign affairs and international affairs and all the other jobs be transferred to the committee instead of creating a new committee,” he said.
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Sen. Abdullahi‘s suggestion received Sen. Akpabio’s support and the senate president also agreed that plenary sitting time be amended to synchronise with that of the House of Representatives.
Opposing the motion, the former President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan (APC, Yobe north) stressed that it was unreasonable to shift the sitting time only on grounds for synchronisation with the House of Representatives. He urged his colleagues to reconsider the move before taking a hasty decision. He said: “I don’t know the basis of why we want to shift our sitting from 10 to 11 to finish by 3 pm. To me, we have more energy, our heads are clearer in the morning, and when we are into the day, probably we would have lost some energy and I feel, Mr. President, if we sit plenary, between 10 and 2, our committees would do better. So if we don’t have anything, except that we have to synchronise with the House, perhaps, i think we need to look at it again, but if we have other reasons that we must change, that will be fine.”
Responding to Lawan, Akpabio said: “I think that the idea of the Senate sitting by 11 o’clock was started by you in the 9th Senate and the past. We came and met the tradition, but now we have changed it because during that COVID, we were sitting twice in a week. I said no, there is no more COVID. We should sit three times in a week.”
Lawan on the other hand, was seen repeatedly saying, “no, that is not true.”
In trying to ease the tension in the chamber, Bamidele noted that the reason for the time change was not only for reasons to synchronise with the House but to officially amend it on the senate orders as it has unofficially been a norm to sit by 11.00 am.
He said: “As a matter of fact, there have been some days that we sat and the House of Representatives did not sit. There have been moments that we have sat for a whole week with the House of Reps being on recess. So that cannot be the fundamental reason. Distinguished senators being on this floor is only one out of at least the three principal functions that we have been called for. In fact, the representation on this floor is one. Our committee assignments is another one and of course, we have our oversight functions aside from all the things that we have been engaging in our various constituencies and on a national scale and sometimes on an international scale. Mr. President, a lot of times distinguished senators have to go to bed late and there is no point, having in our rule book that our sitting time is 10 am and every day we sit at 11 o’clock. Of course, there are some distinguished senators who will be here 10 for 10, but there have been a lot of times that you Mr. President came at 11 or 10.30 and we have to wait for some of our colleagues that are late to come. It’s important that we work our talk.”
Akpabio thereafter called for an emergency closed door session at about 12:55 pm for senators to have an in-house discussion which lasted for over 40 minutes.
After reconvening from the closed door, Senator Bamidele withdrew the second part of the motion to create additional committees and urged that the senate be dissolved into the committee of the whole to consider the amendment to the plenary sitting time. The Senate thereafter disssolved accordingly and after consideration approved the amendment of its sitting time.
In his remark, Akpabio noted that in the subsequent sittings, if there be a need to extend the time of sitting beyond 3.00 pm there would be an extension of time at 2.45 pm.
