₦airaland Forum

it's interesting, good story.

[b]On Wednesday, Senators stoutly rejected a proposal to confer a national honour on Umar Mutallab, father of Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab now charged to court in the United States for attempting to bomb a plane on December 25 last year.

Mutallab already holds a national honour, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).

Pushing for the conferment of the honour, Senate Deputy President, Ike Ekweremadu, said he has “it on good authority that some countries are falling over each other to confer honours on Mutallab.

“It is good that Nigeria takes the lead by giving him a national award now. I, therefore, move that the Senate urge the government to reward Mutallab with a national honour for his courage. I so move.”

Twice at plenary, Senate President David Mark put the question on the conferment of a national honour on Mutallab for reporting his son’s radical tendencies to the U.S. embassy in Abuja last November.

Twice, the Chamber responded with an overwhelming “nay.”

Regardless, the Senate adopted the requests of the motion tabled by Senate Leader Teslim Folarin on Abdulmutallab’s action, and resolved to:

• Condemn the attempted terrorist act in its totality.

• Urge the executive to take urgent diplomatic steps to have Nigeria removed from the list of countries that sponsor terrorists.

• Direct the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs to open up communication with its counterpart in the U.S. to resolve the problem.

• Commend Mutallab for reporting his son to the U.S. embassy and the security agencies.

• Urge the government to investigate what has happened to the information given to the security agencies by Mutallab.

Leading debate on the motion, the Vice Chairman of the Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes, Dahiru Kuta, commended Mutallab but appealed to parents that whenever they are sending their wards to other cultures, particularly during their formative years, it is a lesson that they must always keep a close watch or supervision on them.

Deputy Minority Leader, Olorunnimbe Mamora, told his colleagues not to confuse the use of a body scan, which does not “label us as a terrorist nation. We have not been so called.”

Deputy Majority Leader, Victor Ndoma-Egba, echoed the sentiment that we should “commend Mutallab for his heroism in standing against his son. It became easy for us to be so classified because our international diplomacy is failing. “

But Education Committee Chairman, Joy Emodi, blamed “systemic failure” for Abdulmutallab’s action.

“We are paying a very big price with the image of our country with this terrorist act. It is not true that terrorism is alien to Nigeria. We have had a series of terrorist activities in the form of kidnapping, religious riots, and the Niger Delta crisis which has claimed several lives in Nigeria, but the U,S, went too far,” she said.

“Farouk was heavily radicalised but not in Nigeria. We can say what happened is as a result of systemic failure because the father reported his tendencies before it happened.”

Commerce Committee Chairman, Joel Ikenya noted that, “There has been Boko Haram in Borno and Bauchi and the U.S. assumed that we have not taken steps to curtail them.”

Bassey Ewa-Henshaw scoffed: “We are playing the ostrich, pretending that nothing is happening when serious issues are happening. The fact is that from Boko Haram, Niger Delta, religious extremism, burning of churches, to MASSOB in the South East, we have not taken a consistent approach in dealing with the internal crises. The same thing also happened with the Bakassi problem.

“Peace-keeping alone is not enough to make Nigeria a respected nation. The sooner we begin to appreciate that serious issues are confronting us which we must debate in the open, the better for us.

“We can start the cleansing action from among ourselves in this Chamber, just as you have suggested.”

Uche Chukwumerije added that, “The position of the motion is self-righteous. I believe firmly that the U.S. is an imperialist country which wishes no developing country any good.

“Nigeria tends to respond to sectional violence with state terrorism. A good example is the Boko Haram issue with the cold-blooded murder of the leader. Just as America’s action to us is double-barrelled, our response should be double-barrelled.

“We should do a little of internal soul searching. We should do a wake-up call to Nigeria itself[/b]

Hmmmmm This is the best write up i ve ever seen on this nairaland house. Fumi u ve done a great job, i think u deserve an award for dis write up.

Dat boy no get sense at all,if at all he wanted to commit suicide he should ve allow yar'adua and all dis FEC ppl to be in a meeting and he should just die with them, it would ve been better.