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Senate Mace
Senator Abu Ibrahim (APC-Katsina South) has described the Wednesday’s invasion of the Senate Chamber by hoodlums as a “positive development’’.
He stated this on Friday while he fielded questions from State House correspondents in Abuja.
Some hoodlums had on Wednesday entered the Senate chamber during plenary, attacked some persons and made away with the mace.
The legislator, however, observed that the attack was a blessing in disguise as the incident had revealed the security lapse at the assembly.
“Obviously, what has happened is a concern to every Nigerian politician. But, at the same time, we have to accept in Nigeria or all over the world politics sometimes can create a situation of this kind of what happened.
“But this has given us two opportunities; one, to look at the security of the National Assembly itself whereby I think Nigerian National Assembly is the most insecure assembly I have seen in my life.
“Wherever I went to there was good security, you can’t just go in, you cannot access, you cannot go to officers.
“But now if you go to our offices, like my office yesterday there were over 50 people waiting for me and I didn’t give anybody appointment.
“So, this has probably influenced us in the leadership to sit down and critically examine the security of the National Assembly itself. So, it is a positive development.’’
He said the second `benefit’ of the Mace saga was that members of the senate became more united, and they renewed their pledge to abide by the constitution and rules of the national assembly.
According to the senator, the incident has also afforded the senators opportunity to ask themselves questions on what happened and why it happened.
He said: “Secondly we sat at executive session as senators, we asked ourselves what happened and why. And we told ourselves the truth.
“We even pin-pointed culprits in what led to this and we came out with a promise that everyone of us will support and abide by the provision of the constitution.
“Our rules in the national assembly in the senate and obviously we accepted that we are all senators, the same rank, elected by our people and we have the same right and privileges.
“Therefore, this is the second benefit if we can call it benefit of what has happened what we saw two days ago.’’
On the activities of the Buhari Support Group, Ibrahim disclosed that the group would be inaugurating its offices in Edo, Akwa Ibom and Cross River States on Monday.
He added that the group’s campaign buses would also be inaugurated at the same time.
