Awoniyi Indicts Northern Senators
Over onshore/offshore, qualification
From Kola Ologbondiyan and Ahmed Oyerinde in Sokoto
Chairman of Arewa Con-sultative Forum (ACF), Chief Sunday Awoniyi, yesterday in Sokoto State, chided northern senators for allowing the contentious onshore/offshore dichotomy abrogated by a law they (senators) participated in enacting.
He also said that some of the lawmakers acted the way they did following the blackspot in their qualification.
Awoniyi, in his remarks as the chairman of the occasion, said "certain things have happened in the legislature which is absolutely baffling. That with 58 Senators being northerners, how can certain measures be passed through that House and there was not a whimper."
Awoniyi who described the action as a disservice to the interest of the northern region of the country, further bemoaned the development and said: "I sympathise with you when I think of your problems atimes, I know some of you are in the Senate not because you deserve to be there, but because you were wangled there.
"Therefore, those who put you there expect you to be more loyal to them than to the Senate.
"And if any senator stands up to say that I am sponsoring this programme, no mater how brilliant it is, and says I am sure nobody would oppose it, he would be deceiving himself.
"Because if the trumpeter decides that the puppet should not join in supporting it, it would not succeed.
"But whatever error you have made in getting to where you are, try and repent so that you can do what is correct," he counselled.
Also speaking at the event, Senator Idris Kuta tried to rationalise the lawmakers' actions by painting a graphic picture of the relationship between the legislature and the executive.
Kuta, in his remarks, at the opening session of the retreat, noted that "the legislator is the whipping boy either at the state or federal level.
"The reason being that even though we approve that no executive head should spend one naira without the approval of the lawmakers, when we, too, want to come to get what we need for approval, we must also get the approval of the executive.
"Without that approval of the executive, though we may have approved that in the budget, the executive would approve the money, warrant would be issued but there would be no release until we have danced to the tune of the executive.
"So that is why people blame us that we have become the so-called rubber-stamp of the executive. A situation must be put in the system that the legislature and the judiciary because of the checks and balances should be funded directly and should not have to pass through the executive arm of government to get their funding," he asserted
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