National Assembly to approve extension of State Of Emergency in Nigeria’s north eastern states

The National Assembly looks set to approve President Goodluck Jonathan’s request for extension for another six months the state of emergency declared by the Federal Government in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states in May last year.

While there are strong indications that the Senate will approve the President’s request next week, the House of Representatives, yesterday, approved the President’s request after a three-hour closed door meeting with service chiefs in Abuja.

The Senate said, yesterday, it would have more consultations with relevant stakeholders on whether the extension should be approved after about three hours closed door session with the Chief of Defence Staff, Service Chiefs, Minister of Defence, Director General of Department of State Service, the National Security Adviser and the Inspector-General of Police.

Speaking after a closed door session, the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over the plenary, said senators had a fruitful deliberation with the relevant security chiefs, adding that the Senate analysed the deliberations after they (security chiefs) left.

Ekweremadu said: “As responsible and patriotic Nigerians, we are looking at it from very diverse angles to ensure that the security situation in those states improve at the shortest possible time.

”Apart from that, the Senate also agreed to do further consultations with all the necessary stakeholders to ensure that everybody could buy into whatever that is needed to be done to secure those states and defeat insurgency there.

”This is what transpired at our closed door session. So by Tuesday, we will continue our deliberation on the state of emergency and insurgency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states.”

Senator Smart Adeyemi, representing Kogi West, said that after meeting with the nation’s security chiefs, the Senate needed to ask more questions, especially as the senators representing the affected states where state of emergency was imposed, had raised fundamental issues which should be verified.

Speaker Aminu Tambuwal, who presided at plenary before putting the issue to a voice vote, said “we agreed yesterday, Wednesday, to vote on the extension of emergency rule and after an exhaustive meeting with the service chiefs on their operations so far, we agreed to vote on it.”
 
When he eventually put it to a voice, a thunderous ay carried the day.