Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu on Wednesday met behind closed doors at the the Presidential Villa, Abuja. It was learned that the meeting followed the invasion of the Senate by some hoodlums said to have been led by Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, who was last week suspended by the red chamber for allegedly violating the Senate rules.
The hoodlums disrupted plenary and made away with the mace, the symbol of authority of the Senate. After the meeting with the vice president, Ekweremadu told newsmen that “I am sure you are aware of the Senate invasion today and we have to come and brief the Vice President because the President is not in town.
”So it was appropriate for him to know what transpired because we run a democracy, we are all in one government. It is the responsibility of the President or the Vice President to ensure that there is law and order in the country, and once we have this kind of major development it is important that he is briefed at the earliest opportunity,” said the Deputy Senate President.
“As the Senate President is out of the country, it is therefore my responsibility to come over and brief the Vice President. He has sympathized with us over what happened, and he is going to join forces with us to ensure that we get to the root of the matter to make sure that this will not happen again.
“For us, it’s a threat to our democracy, the invasion of the parliament is not acceptable to any person. It is not acceptable to me, it is not acceptable to the VP, it not acceptable to my colleagues. I believe it is not also acceptable to the President, so those who acted this script must be on their own.
“All we need to do as a country is to ensure that this is forestalled, and I want to appeal to the media to help us discourage this kind of brigandage so that people have to behave in a very responsible manner. But let me assure you that we are on top of the situation. We did our sitting today and we are going to continue tomorrow.
Ekweremadu continued that: “Having suffered suspension, does Omo-Agege have legal right to enter the chamber? It was a breach of the law for him to force himself into the chambers. As I said, the police is still investigating. We are going to find out the details of those who aided him to come in, and then some of them I believe have been arrested, and we will get to the root of the matter,” the Senator said.
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