10th Senate: Embrace Peace, Pro-democracy Group Urges Aggrieved Senators 

* Advocates state burial for Joseph Wayas, two years after death

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

A pro-democracy group, Citizens Network for Peace and Development in Nigeria (CNPDN), has urged aggrieved senators to embrace peace instead of creating crisis in the 10th Senate.

The National Secretary of the Forum, Francis Okereke Wainwei, and other leaders of the CNPDN made the appeal while addressing journalists in Abuja Monday.

While calling for calm, the group vowed to expose any federal lawmaker that could be planning any action that might cause disaffection in the National Assembly. 

It urged the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, to intervene and facilitate a befitting burial for the late President of the Senate, Joseph Wayas.

The group lamented that the late Wayas, who was the President of Nigeria’s Senate from 1979-1983, remained unburied two years after his demise.

CNPDN said: “We are hereby appealing to Akpabio, President of the 10th Senate, to intervene in the matter and resolve whatever challenges that have led to this unnecessary delay in giving our revered former Senate President a befitting burial.

“We are incurably optimistic that our uncommon transformational leader will heed our call and do the needful.”

On the alleged plans by some aggrieved opposition senators to disturb the peace of the Senate, the group said such moves would be counterproductive. 

Wainwei alleged that the aggrieved senators were the ones that worked against the collective interest of the nation, when Akpabio was endorsed by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Bayelsa-born rights activist said the senators were the ones behind the candidature of Abdulaziz Yari for Senate President campaigns and activities.

He further alleged that the aggrived senators have vowed to continue pursuing their “unpatriotic, selfish and parochial interests by teaming up with the major opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to frustrate the leadership of the 10th Senate, even after losing out in a free and fair election conducted in the public glare at the Senate”.

He warned them to refrain from “distracting the leadership of the Senate and allow it to focus on working harmoniously with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to deliver quality and life-transforming projects and programmes to alleviate the pathetic plight of the long-suffering masses of this country”.

He said: “The era of politics is over and therefore, they should accept their defeat in good faith and give peace a chance.

“They can still contribute in enhancing the legislative process by making informed, robust and well-researched contributions on the floor of the Senate and in committee sessions, if their desire to take over the leadership of the Senate is purely a patriotic one.”