Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has informed the National Assembly that President Muhammadu Buhari gives or withholds assent to bills sent to him without bias.
Osinbajo dropped the hint at a public lecture to commemorate the 1st anniversary of the National Assembly Legislative Digest, a magazine published to create awareness on parliamentary practices, held in Abuja.
The theme of the event was: “Strengthening Legislative Bureaucracy: The Dangers of Divided Loyalty.”
Represented by the Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters, Senator Ita Enang, Osibanjo said, “President Muhammadu Buhari considers the bill on its merit and assents to it if he is convinced or declines assent giving good and cogent reason for doing so”.
He said “the President does not discriminate or look at any bill coming from the National Assembly if it was a member bill or executive bill. He treats them as bills passed by the legislature.”
He further stated that one sure way the President is helping to build legislators’ capacity as well as legislative bureaucracy’s capacity was by funding the building of the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies from the executive vote. Adding that he doesn’t say, look, fund it from the National Assembly budget.
Osinbajo, who commended the lawmakers on the number of bills passed so far, assured that the executive would continue to work hand-in-hand with the legislature.
He said: “We want to say to National Assembly in general that Mr. President commends you for the number of bills that comes out of the National Assembly.
The vice president said the executive would continue to ensure that not only the legislators’ capacity was built but that the legislative bureaucracy’s capacity was also built.
He, therefore, promised that the executive would maintain the channel of relationship that had been created through this occasion and improve on it.
On his part, the President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, said the theme of the event was apt, pointing out: “Loyalty to one’s community or nation is paramount.”
According to Saraki, it is divided loyalty that leads to complexity and corruption among others.
According to the senate President who was represented by the Deputy Senate Leader, Bala Na’allah, Saraki said if commitment and loyalty were geared toward a single course, “which is nationhood, then we will be promoting partners in progress rather than dichotomy and sectionalism”.
He described the Digest as a tool to bridge the information gap between the National Assembly and the public and said that Nigeria’s democracy could be enhanced or endangered by the media.
The Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, represented by Chairman, Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Abdulrazak Namdas, said: “The topic strikes at the heart of the defining character of a true public servant or a bureaucrat, which is loyalty.”
According to Dogara, the colonial masters who bequeathed the bureaucracy we are operating deliberately named all officers in the system as servants to instil in their sub-conscious minds that they are servants of the people.
Dogara said that the “servants” must, therefore, be loyal to the people, adding that similarly, all who hold key political offices, either by election or appointment, were constitutionally mandated to swear to Oath of Office and Allegiance.
“We cannot afford to compromise this duty,” he said, adding that loyalty engendered good attributes such as accountability, diligence and honesty.
The Clerk to the National Assembly, Mohammed Sani-Omolori, who expressed total loyalty to the leadership of National Assembly, said hard work to service was loyalty.
Sani-Omolori who said the subject of loyalty can be controversial and throws up a lot of emotions reminded what former president Obasanjo said while swearing in seven new permanent secretaries on January 12, 2016 to the effect that, “to me (Obasanjo), there is nothing like 99.9% loyalty; it has to be total otherwise, it is unacceptable.
The Highlight of the occasion was the award to the Clerk of the National Assembly, Mohammed Ataba Sani-Omolori and his counterpart, former Deputy Clerk of the National Assembly.
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