The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, along with his colleagues had come under a lot of fire from people who believe that they are demanding immunity for themselves.
In a recent retreat on the proposed amendment of the 1999 constitution, the Senate had supposedly demanded that immunity be open to Lawmakers too. This has not gone down well with the public.
According to Independentnig.com, Alhaji Yusuph Olaniyonu, the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Senate President tried to explain just what the Senate President meant.
He stated that it was erroneous to think that the Senate was just demanding immunity for themselves, but rather what was proposed was that the three heads of the major arms of government be provided immunity.
Olaniyonu stressed that the three arms of government; Legislature, Executive and Judiciary were all equally important and independent and should therefore have immunity for their heads instead of just for the Executive.
In his words, “it is either immunity is given to the three arms of government or withdrawn from all”.
He said, “ On the issue of immunity, what they discussed at the retreat is that the senators said it is either you give immunity to all three arms of government or immunity to none. That is, there are three arms of government; the executive, legislative and the judiciary”.
“One cannot be enjoying immunity, while the others can’t benefit from same. The immunity is not for the Senate president alone, it will also be given to the Chief Justice of Nigeria who is the head of the judiciary arm of government”.
“ So, the senators said it is either you give all the heads of the three arms or you remove it from the executive arm so that nobody will have it”