The Senate leadership has commenced serious ‘stock-taking’ and assessment of its performance and failures in the last year. It was learnt that the exercise, among others, is aimed at identifying the key issues and challenges the upper chamber faced within the outgoing legislative session to determine how well such issues had been addressed.

It was also learnt that the entire 90 committees had received strict directives to prepare comprehensive reports of their activities during the session, identify progress made, failures recorded and come up with suggestions on possible areas of improvement. But as the upper legislative chamber strives towards improving its legislative interventions and effecting corrections on some mistakes made so far, what it did or failed to do could serve as a kind of template or framework.

Indeed, facts, figures and developments that shaped the upper legislative chamber, particularly as they affect governance as well as the socio-economic lives of the people in the last year are the real factors identified to set the right stage for the next legislative year. Looking back, the National Assembly that was inaugurated on the 11 June 2019 was one borne into a generation of teething socio-economic and political challenges requiring some legislative remedies.

According to one of the presiding officers, it was obvious that the assignments of the 9th Senate predated its inauguration. Some of those pending issues include the passage of the much-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill and the enactment of legislation that would introduce the conduct of the credible, free and fair election in the country. While these are still being awaited, the National Assembly attempted to address other problems including unrealistic and non-performing national budgets, hostile and suspicious relationship between the executive and the legislative arms of government which had adversely affected development programmes in the past, and internal crisis among legislators.

Many lawmakers had drawn attention to the politics and campaigns that preceded the emergence of the current Senate President, Mr. Ahmed Lawan, which they said were bases for giving immediate attention to some issues they addressed.

“You would recall that the campaigns and politics were not only robust but attracted some rough and hostile exchanges which threatened the peace expected in the 9th Senate as seen in the early life of the 8th Senate where some aggrieved lawmakers dragged presiding officers to court for allegedly forging Senate Rules,” a lawmaker stated.

According to him, “To avoid that experience and return the Senate to a path of peaceful co-existence among lawmakers, Lawan did not waste time in initiating peace talks among potential ‘warriors’ in the Senate. Opposition lawmakers were especially reached for political ‘truce’.”

A naughty issue that attracted criticisms to the leadership of the 9th Senate was its relationship with the executive arm of government. Many still describe the Senate leadership as a body desperate to make peace with the executive arm of government. It has been argued that the upper chamber is being made a rubber-stamp legislature.

However, Lawan, in defence of the chummy relationship between the Senate and the presidency had said that the Senate “will commit to the partnership rather than partisanship and between us and the executive arm of government, we will choose unity of purpose over conflict and discord while also working towards further strengthening and guaranteeing our independence and that of the judiciary.”

Lawan continues to insist that his belief in President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision and that of the All Progressives Congress should not be misconstrued as eroding his independence of mind and that of the Senate.

He said: “During my campaign, I was called a potential rubber-stamp Senate President to the executive, maybe because I am close to the president, or because I believe in his cause. There is no time that I will ever be a rubber stamp. Yes, I believe in President Buhari as a person and I believe in my party, the APC, but I believe that our problems as Nigerians are Nigerian problems.

“They are neither APC nor PDP problems; they are Nigerian problems that require a Nigerian solution. So, we have to work together. We will be there for the executive arm of government all the time in moving this country forward.”

The lawmaker argued that in recent times, the leadership of the Senate openly disagreed with the executive arm on the issue of palliatives, pointing out that in a rubber-stamp parliament, nobody would do that. A few weeks ago, allegations of monumental fraud perpetrated at the Social Investments Programmes (SIP) attracted serous criticisms and anger from the leadership of the National Assembly.