Senate President Ahmad Lawan has said it is wrong for Nigerians to call the National Assembly a rubber-stamp legislature or an appendage of the Executive.
Lawan said the reason people feel that is because most of the request sent by the Executive to the Legislature has been approved.
The Senate President noted that the Red Chamber has disagreed with the Presidency of the Federal Government on many occasions but they have adopted a method settling their differences.
He added that there would be better “service delivery” to the people when there is cooperation and mutual respect between the two arms of government.
Lawan noted that the Senate under his leadership will not be going the way of the senate under Bukola Saraki, his predecessor, who had a frosty relationship with Buhari.
“Do you know that we have disagreed with Mr. President, the executive arm of government, many times? People don’t know, because what we have adopted is to go behind the scenes and solve our problems,” he said in an interview with Daily Trust.
“I have also witnessed better service delivery to the people when there was cooperation and mutual respect between the two arms.
“I think I will be unfair to myself, to the people and to the senators who elected me to choose right from the beginning to just fight in the name of independence of the legislature.
“I believe in the independence of the legislature more than people think. Now they say we are a rubber stamp assembly.
“What people don’t know is that there is nothing that in the opinion of the Senate or national assembly that will jeopardise the liberty of our people or against the interest of the majority of Nigerians that we will do.
“Call us anything, if you like, not rubber stamp, call us steel stamp or whatever it is. I can tell you, today this senate has done, in the last count, 27 confirmations.
“Tell me, if we didn’t do those confirmations; tell me how governance will be carried on? There will be so much arbitrariness, maybe ministers will take advantage of where they are to supervise; there could be a lot of abuse.
“So, we shouldn’t confirm people? If we confirm it is rubber stamping.”
