Leadership (Abuja)
Uchenna Awom and Andrew Oota
18 November 2009
Abuja — President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua may have to criss-cross the two chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives to present the 2010 appropriation bill separately to each of the chambers, unless the senators and members of the House decide to suspend their supremacy war and face reality.
The senators, coming out from their plenary session yesterday, announced that the President would be making his presentation before a joint session of the National Assembly inside the chambers of the Senate for the first time. Senate spokesman Ayogu Eze told correspondents that the President of the Senate, as the chairman of the National Assembly, has chosen the chambers of the Senate as the venue for the President to present the 2010 budget speech.
The position is against what is now termed as the tradition of using the most spacious chamber of the House of Representatives.
But Senator Eze was quick to walve aside the space excuse, saying that the issue would not pose a problem as it is the duty of the National Assembly bureaucracy to arrange the floor to accommodate every lawmaker from both chambers But the House, speaking through its spokesman, Eseme Eyibo, said the House would stick to the tradition, which is that the House floor remains the venue for all joint sessions and as such this one would not be an exception. It is a tradition that has subsisted since 1999, he added
He briefed House reporters and said that the argument remains that the House has more seat space to accommodate all senators and House members, adding that they would be waiting for the senators to attend the session in the House chambers.
Eyibo further argued that the Senate chambers cannot accommodate every member of both chambers.
The latest development means that the often mused altercation among leadership of both chambers has deepened. The ego war was triggered off in Minna, the Niger State capital, when the Joint Committee on Constitution Review (JCCR) went for a retreat to harmonize positions. Unfortunately, they dispersed unceremoniously when the Deputy Speaker and the Deputy Senate President, locked hrons in a supremacy war over who was the chairman of the JCCR.
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