THERE were indications, on Sunday, of an imminent clash between the Presidency and the Senate over an alleged attempt by the Presidency to rubbish the senate president.
Pro-Saraki senators are accusing the Presidency of instigating the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Mrs. Anastacia Nwaobia, not to honour an invitation by the upper chamber.
Nwaobia had communicated to the Senate that she could not honour its invitation without an approval by her supervisors to do so but the Saraki loyalists said the Senate had the constitutional power to invite Nwaobia and that her refusal constituted an affront to the legitimacy of the senate president.
The Saraki loyalists’ belief apparently rested on the alleged ‘non-acceptance’ of his presidency by the All Progressives Congress and President Muhammadu Buhari.
“It will not augur well for our democracy if the Presidency will not allow civil servants to do their jobs. We should not carry the crisis in the APC to the Senate,” a pro-Saraki senator told one of our correspondents in Abuja on Sunday.
Both Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, had spurned the party’s directive on who to lead the National Assembly and had ridden on the back of an alleged alliance with the opposition Peoples Democratic Party members to clinch the leadership posts in both chambers.
The APC had preferred Ahmad Lawan, a Senator from Yobe State, as the president of the Senate.
The Lawan group in the Senate on Sunday said it supported Nwaobia because Saraki was said to lack both legitimacy and the moral right to invite the permanent secretary to brief the senate on the state of the economy.
The Saraki group said the ‘offending’ permanent secretary failed to honour the Senate’s invitation because she did not get clearance from the Presidency.
Investigations by one of our correspondents revealed that as of Friday the permanent secretary had yet to neither appear before the Senate leadership nor respond to the letters from the National Assembly management.
It was learnt that senators loyal to the Senate President were angry that the Presidency could encourage the civil servants to disobey the Senate.
The PUNCH had on Thursday reported that the Senate ad hoc committee on Finance, in a letter dated June 29, 2015, had invited Nwaobia and some officials of the finance ministry to appear before the committee on July 8.
But when the permanent secretary did not honour the invitation at 11am on July 8, the Clerk to the National Assembly, Alhaji Salisu Maikasuwa, wrote another letter to her the same day, restating the invitation.
The permanent secretary was said to have sent a text message to the Senate on July 7, explaining why she could not come.
But the clerk’s letter, a copy of which was sent to the Head of Service of the Federation, read, “I refer to our letter Ref. No. NASS/S//SP/ COS/CORRP/15/1/06 of June 29, 2015 on the above subject matter and your text message of July 7, 2015 to the Chief of Staff to the Senate President, signifying your inability to honour the invitation.
“Your action is a deliberate violation of the provisions of Section 67(2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999(as amended).
“You are, therefore, requested to appear before the Senate leadership as contained in your aforementioned letter on Wednesday July 8, 2015 at 2.00pm prompt.”
The third letter to the Permanent Secretary, written by the Chief of Staff to the Senate President, Issa Galaudu, also stressed the importance of the meeting. It read, “Please note that your text message of yesterday, Tuesday, July 7, 2015, which I received by hours of 20:02 pm, suggesting that you would not make today’s meeting, is unacceptable.
“This is an affront to the President of the Senate and its leadership. The provision of Section 67(2) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), is very clear and unambiguous in this regard. Hence, you do not need the permission...Continue Punch
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