Our Senate Is A White Elephant

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Our Senate is a luxury. Akpabio, the Senate President, can’t choose his words carefully. Recently, he reminded a female senator that the Senate is not a nightclub. He was rebuking her for not obtaining his permission before speaking. In his flippancy and uncouthness, idleness could be gleaned. 

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Senator Akpabio received a letter from Ganduje, APC chairmen, and read it in plenary. Then, robotically, he revved the engines of the Senate and dumped Ndume. That sequence would have been fitting in a one-party communist state like China. Ndume’s sin was that he criticized the president. 

Senate And The Poor Next Door

 By Andy Ezeani

The Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as with most public institutions in the country, hardly gets embarrassed with anything or under any circumstance. Were it otherwise, the upper chamber of the country’s National Assembly would have ended last week with its tails between its legs. It ought to. But that was not so. On the contrary, the lawmaking institution embarked on a bullish pushback against an obvious gaffe that it ought to feel thoroughly embarrassed at. 

*Akpabio and Tinubu

The strenuous effort last week, marshalled by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramola, on the umbrage taken by some citizens at the seeming mockery of the poor on the floor of the Senate led by the Senate President himself, was quite pathetic. Couched in highfalutin language that came across more like a students’ union composition than any purposeful communication from such height, the Senate missed an opportunity to cast a better image of itself.