Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu has said he was at the Presidential Villa to update Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo, on what transpired earlier at the Red Chamber during plenary on Wednesday.
DAILY POST had reported that Ekweremadu and Osinbajo were meeting behind closed-doors meeting for hours after the invasion of the Senate chambers by suspected thugs.
Ekweremadu told state house correspondents at the end of the meeting that since the President, Muhammadu Buhari, and the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, were out of the country, it was incumbent on him to intimate the Vice-President on the invasion of Senate by hoodlums.
He said: “I’m sure you are aware of the senate invasion today and we have to come and brief the vice-president because the president is not in town. It is appropriate for him to know. We are in a democracy; we are all in one government.
“It is the responsibility of the president or the vice-president to ensure that there is law and order in the country and once we have this kind of major development it is important that he is briefed at the earliest opportunity.
“The senate president is out of the country, it is, therefore, my responsibility to come over and brief the vice-president who has sympathised with us over what happened and he is going to join forces with us to ensure that we get to the root of the matter to make sure that this will not happen again.
“For us, it’s a threat to our democracy, the invasion of the parliament is not acceptable to any person, it’s not acceptable to me, it’s not acceptable to the VP, it’s not acceptable to my colleagues, I believe it’s not also acceptable to the president so those who acted this script must be on their own.”
He also appealed to the media to do its best in discouraging this “kind of brigandage”.
Ekweremadu also criticised Omo-Agege, wondering the right he had to enter into the red chamber when he was on suspension.
“All we need to do as a country is to ensure that this is forestalled and I want to appeal to the media to help us discourage this kind of brigandage so that people have to behave in a very responsible manner. But let me assure you that we are on top of the situation, we did our sitting today and we are going to continue tomorrow,” he said.
“Having suffered suspension, does Omo-Agege have legal right to enter the chamber? It was a breach of the law for him to force himself into the chambers, as I said police is still investigating we are going to find out the details of those who aided him to come in and then some of them I believe have been arrested and we will get to the root of the matter,” he added,
It could be recalled that Senator Ovie Omo-Agege allegedly led suspected thugs into the senate chamber to cart away the mace, which is the symbol of authority of the legislature.
Theodore Orji, a Senator from Abia state was speaking on the floor of the senate when the unwanted visitors broke in.
The senate immediately went into a closed-door session after which a spare mace was brought and it reconvened.
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