President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has warned that there could be anarchy if the Senate is scrapped as being clamoured by some Nigerians.
Rather, he challenged those who are not comfortable with the senators in the current 9 th Senate to vote them out in 2023 if they don’ t like their faces.
Lawan stated this on Friday while declaring open, a retreat for top management staff of the National Assembly and National Assembly Service Commission in Abuja.
He described the Senate as a leveler which ensured that all parts of the country are equally represented unlike the House of Representatives where states with higher populations produce the highest number of lawmakers.
The Senate President also faulted the argument of those clamouring for the scrapping of the Senate because of the perceived jumbo pay being earned by the senators.
He said the annual budget of the National Assembly is less than one per cent of the nation’s 2021 budget.
Meanwhile, Rivers State governor, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, has said Nigeria's house of assembly is full of rubbers who lack the courage to discharge its "constitutional checks and balance role over the executive arm of government."
Wike who made the statement during the occasion of the 61st Independence Anniversary of Nigeria in Port Harcourt on Friday, said for the past six years, the country’s democracy was being weakened and put to enormous stress and jeopardy with the continuous violation of the constitution by the Federal Government and other public institutions.
The governor said: “With democracy, Nigerians expected strong national institutions, the bureaucracy, the security institutions and the Independent National Electoral Commission to be loyal only to the constitution, the law and the people.
“But today, after 61 years of independence and 22 years of unbroken democracy, it only seems there’s not much to be excited about Nigeria except our national sense of independence and unity that had endured this long in the face of sustained fartricidal assaults to its existence.
“Let us make a candid assessment of the situation of our country, especially in the last six years, and tell ourselves some hard, undiluted truths. First of all, we cannot deny that most of the countries that started with us 61 years ago are far more advanced and developed with superlative standards of living for their people than Nigeria.
“Our democracy is being weakened and put to enormous stress and jeopardy with the continuous violation of our constitution by the Federal Government and other public institutions.
“The National Assembly has literarily abandoned its constitutional checks and balance role over the executive arm of government and become a slavish appendage to the Federal Government as rubber stamp Assembly.
“Neither is the situation and postures of the nation’s judiciary any better, where only a few judicial officers can stand the test of judicial courage, integrity and commitment to substantial justice in the performance of their constitutional responsibilities, while the entire judiciary, especially at the national level, has been bullied to nervousness to the detriment of our democracy, the rule of law and social justice.”