• Set to receive 2014 budget proposal from President
CALLS for the impeachment of President Goodluck Jonathan suffered a serious setback Tuesday as the Senate expressed its opposition to them.
Rising from a session behind closed-doors which lasted over an hour, the upper legislative chamber which is constitutionally empowered to play a leading role in the impeachment of the president or vice president, declared that the calls for Jonathan’s impeachment were lacking in merit to warrant its attention.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) had last Sunday called on the National Assembly to immediately commence impeachment process against Jonathan for alleged gross misconduct.
It said in a statement by its Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, that Jonathan’s impeachment would save Nigeria from imminent collapse.
But briefing journalists shortly after the Senate’s meeting, the Spokesman and Chairman of the Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, said the Senate considered calls for the President’s impeachment as “utter rubbish.”
“We have heard of the call for the President’s impeachment and as far as the Senate is concerned, it is an utter rubbish,” Abaribe said.
The APC had, however, said it called on the National Assembly to impeach Jonathan with a strong belief that the move was a legitimate constitutional option available to the lawmakers not only to protect the nation’s democracy, but to ensure its unity.
It explained that it based the call for Jonathan’s impeachment on the dangerous drifting of the country, adding that there was a total failure of leadership, insecurity, unprecedented corruption, impunity, massive unemployment and hunger in the country.
Also yesterday, the Senate said the National Assembly was set to receive the 2014 budget proposal from the President after a successful harmonisation of its differences with the House of Representatives on the issue of oil benchmark.
The House of Representatives had passed $79 per barrel as the benchmark for the 2014 budget while the Senate preferred $76.50 per barrel as benchmark.
Abaribe said: “The conference committee on MTEF/PSF that had adjourned sine die last week, because of differences between the Senate and the House of Representatives with regard to the benchmark will reconvene hopefully and we will resolve the matter.
“Of course, resolution of the matter also means that the National Assembly will be in a position to receive the budget from the President. This is what I can confirm.”
It was learnt that the 12-member joint conference committee which met behind closed-doors yesterday had pegged the benchmark at $77.50 per barrel.
It was also learnt that the National assembly had asked the President to choose any day from today till the end of the year to present the budget proposal.
Reacting to the APC’s position, the Presidency had warned the party and others, who it said were bent on plunging the nation into political instability, to be ready for the consequences of treasonable action.
The APC’s statement reads in part: “Since the raison d’etre of any government is the security and welfare of the citizenry, and the present administration has failed to live up to the justification of its existence, there can be no other definition of gross misconduct but that.
“Therefore, the time has come for the head of that government, on whose desk the buck stops, to be removed through the provisions stipulated in the 1999 Constitution. This is the patriotic thing to do.”
The APC warned that if the National Assembly failed to act very fast, it would share with the “clueless and feckless” Jonathan administration the blame for dashing the hopes of millions of Nigerians, especially the youths.
The party said it was necessary for anyone who might say the call for the impeachment of the President was outlandish to remember that all it would take to torpedo the current democracy was “for this increasingly-paranoid government to get a pliant judge to put a judicial stamp on just one of its litany of illegalities.”
The party also wondered why the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) could go to court to challenge the defection of five of its governors.
It recalled that an attempt by the ruling party to declare the seat of the then Vice President Atiku Abubakar vacant was rejected by the Supreme Court, when he defected to the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).
It wondered what could have been the motive behind the latest action of the PDP.
The APC said: “What then can be the sole motive behind the PDP’s action? To plunge Nigeria into chaos? This is why we issued a strong warning in our statement of December 5 in which we said, ‘We wish to state unequivocally that should the PDP go ahead with this plan, there will be widespread repercussions as the APC has resolved that, henceforth, every act of impunity of the PDP and the Presidency will be met with stiff resistance in the form of a vociferous telegraphing of people’s power, the likes of which have not been witnessed in these parts.’
“We reiterate those words today (Sunday), and make bold to say that not even the revelation by former President Olusegun Obasanjo that snipers are being trained secretly and that 1,000 people have been placed on political watch, will deter us from saving this democracy, which was watered by the sweat and blood of many patriots, long before this generation of opportunists stormed the political scene.”
The opposition said while Nigerians were very much aware of the failings of the Jonathan government in all sectors, it was important to remind them that the administration had, in particular, not been up to scratch in fighting corruption.
The party said the government had also failed to provide jobs for Nigerian youths, even as it daily reels out phantom figures of economic growth that only serve to keep the so-called Ivy League-trained officials in charge of the economy on their jobs.
The APC added: “The talk out there now is that Nigeria has never had it so bad. But the government may not know because it has distanced itself from the people.
“Therefore, for embracing corruption so much and providing succour to corrupt public officials, for threatening the country’s fragile unity through divisive policies and politics, for frittering away the nation’s resources through unprecedented cronyism and clannishness, and for a total failure of leadership, this President deserves to be slammed with the cudgel of impeachment.”