Senators in the National Assembly have vowed to vote against the request from President Goodluck Jonathan to extend the State of Emergency in three troubled North Eastern states, Yobe, Borno and Adamawa.
The Senators under the aegis of Northern Senators Forum held a meeting yesterday where it was agreed that they would use their strength in numbers to try and defeat the motion when it comes up for vote on the floor of the National Assembly.
Chairman of Northern Senators Forum, Senator Umaru Dahiru said, “Our meeting discussed basically the issue of emergency rule in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. Everybody in attendance made contributions and a lot was said.
“The majority position is that we are not going with the state of emergency. That is our categorical position because we are not convinced that it is only the issue of emergency rule that could make the security personnel to achieve success in the area.
“We believe a lot of things ought to be addressed to conquer the issue of insurgency.
“We are going to engage the three governors in the affected states. We want to know what went wrong to be able to come up with better ways to tackle the crisis.
“The constitution requires two third majority in terms of voting. Of course we are going to vote on the issue. If we can outnumber them during the voting, fine.”
Meanwhile the Upper and Lower chambers of the House have invited the security chiefs to come and brief them on the security situation in the Northeast so they may take an informed decision on the President’s request.
Senate Leader, Senator Victor Ndoma Egba, said: “The proclamation by the requirements of the constitution is supposed to be gazetted. We must circulate the gazette before we can debate it. Secondly, it has been the tradition of this Senate that before debates, we appraise and access the performance of the state of emergency.
“So I will move that this distinguished Senate do invite the Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Chief of Naval Staff, Chief of Air Staff, Inspector-General of Police and the Director General of the Department of State Services, DSS, to brief this Senate at 10a.m. today in a close session to enable us to commence debate on the President request.”
When the issue came up for debate at the House. PDP and APC lawmakers from Borno specifically, Mohammed Monguno (APC), and Kaka Gujbawu (PDP, Borno) were in favour of an extension. Titsi Ganama (PDP, Adamawa), Ali Yakubu (PDP, Yobe) and Toby Okechukwu (PDP, Enugu) also spoke in favour of the extension.
However, Goni Bukar Haruna (APC, Yobe), said “On behalf of the people and government of Yobe State, I stand to oppose the extension of the state of emergency.
“It has not helped us in any way. Rather, it only succeeded in aggravating the insurgency. Since they declared it one year ago, many people have been killed in the states more than when there was no emergency.”