The Senate has explained why it could not attend to the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu, and other member-nominees of the Commission who had turned up for their screening yesterday, attributing the development to the poor attendance of senators at plenary.
Senate deputy majority leader, Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah, who disclosed this to the members of the Senate Press Corps yesterday shortly after the day’s plenary session, explained that due the importance of the screening exercise, the Senate could not have gone ahead without a majority of the senators present.
It was learnt that many of them had gone to support their respective parties in the Rivers State rerun polls coming up this Saturday.
Na’Allah, however, noted that the absent senators were on oversight assignment at different parts of the country, and said they deserve to be part of the confirmation hearing.
According to him, Magu had also been officially informed of the rescheduling of his screening date, a decision, he said, was taken at a meeting of the Senate leadership.
He gave the new date the screeing and confirmation of Magu and others as Thursday, December 15, 2016, a day after President Muhammadu Buhari would present the 2017 budget estimates to a joint sitting of the National Assembly.
“We agreed that today (yesterday) will be the confirmation hearing of the EFCC acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu, but yesterday (Wednesday) we received a lot of calls from senators who are away and who believe that they want to participate and that it is unfair for us to fix today when we know they are not around.
“When we looked at the demands and number, we felt it would be wrong for us to proceed and disregard those calls.
“Then we said, let us put it against Tuesday. Again, we became too unsure as to whether Monday or Tuesday would be declared a public holiday by the federal government in respect of the impending Eid-el Maulud holiday.
“We said it is now even more convenient on Wednesday. The president is going to present the 2017 budget before the National Assembly and the assumption is that more than 80 per cent of the senators will be in attendance on that day.
“If 80 per cent of the senators are there and they are aware that the confirmation hearing is the next day, which is Thursday, it means that the idea of somebody going to say that the leadership of the Senate has shut him from asking the question he wants to ask will not be there. We agreed at the leadership meeting that we should put it for Thursday,” Na’Allah said.
Source:Leadership
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Politics