Na’Allah: Senate Cannot Be Scrapped

The Deputy Leader of the Senate, Bala Ibn Na’Allah, has described those mooting and calling for the scrapping of the Senate as ignorant, stressing that the Senate cannot be scrapped.

In a series of video interviews conducted by Bamikole Omishore, Special Assistant New Media to the President of the Senate, Na’Allah said the Senate is fully backed by the constitution.

The interview was published on the official twitter handle of the Nigerian Senate @NGRSenate yesterday.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the National Assembly especially the Senate has been an object of criticism over fat pay and allowances with some Nigerians calling for the scrapping of the Senate and maintaining a unicameral legislature.

The Deputy Leader therefore stressed that the Senate was established in a bicameral legislature like Nigeria to ensure that there is no disparity in representation that will exist in a unicameral House of Representatives.
He explained that over 50 per cent of the members of the House of Representatives are from the North and as such could influence any bill in their favour against the South.

“People do not understand the wisdom of the framers of our constitution when they decided to domicile the issue of budgeting in the National Assembly.
“The reason for this is because of our multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic society where every part has expressed fear of domination.

Let us assume that we can have the House of Representatives and avoid the Senate, technically more than 67 per cent of the National Assembly will be from the Northern part of Nigeria.
Democratically, if everything is going to be put to vote, it means the North will always have a share in whatever is wanted in this country.’

“This is not the intention of the framers of our constitution,” he said.
He explained that it was in a bid to avoid such a situation where the North will be dominant that the Senate was crafted based on equality of states and for every state to produce equal number of Senators.
Na’Allah further explained that with the bicameral system, no house can override the other as they must agree on any issue.

“People who have no idea of how we came about and what the constitution says are just exposing their ignorance by calling for the Senate to be scrapped.
“Most participants in the governance of this country, either they do not understand the constitution or they do not understand the reasons for inserting certain provisions in the constitution,” he said.

Na’Allah said that teh senate would continue to do its job and to summon anyone who is under the oversight supervision of the upper legislative chamber.
He said that it was only through strict oversight that the Senate could promote good governannce and ensure that abuse and misuse of power is curtailed.