Nigeria, March 27, 2016 – Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim representing Yobe East Senatorial District in the Senate has said that the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki has the full support of ninety-five percent of the Senators in the Red Chamber of the National Assembly, despite his ongoing trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
The Yobe Senator, who stated this in an interview in Abuja, maintained that Saraki will complete his term as the President of the 8th Senate. According to the third-term Senator and former Governor of Yobe State, the leadership crisis that brought about factions in the Senate (the Bukola Saraki faction and Ahmed Lawan faction) can be said to have been largely resolved.
“It (the leadership crisis) has been substantially reduced to a very minimal level. But as I said earlier there is a court case. If one person or even two people decided to go to the court, there is nothing we can do, other than to wait for the court judgement. So, that one is pending. But generally the Senate is peaceful. Generally, when we are debating national issues you wouldn’t know who is PDP or who is APC. So, the problem has substantially subsided. And I am confident that Bukola Saraki will complete his term. I don’t support the idea of stepping aside. 95% of the Senators in the Senate are fully behind the Senate President, Bukola Saraki. So, the issue of stepping aside does not arise. In any case, this court case nobody knows when it will end. They might even go on and on and on until his term is over. So nobody can really say.”
Speaking on the economic situation in the country for which Nigerians are not smiling, Senator Ibrahim appealed for patience, adding that President Muhammadu Buhari is working hard to make things better for the people.
“Nigerians cannot smile immediately because this is a situation which has been really, really troubling the country for too long; something which has gone so wrong for so long cannot just be tackled within a short period. But the fact of the matter is that bad as the situation was when President Buhari took over, but he is gradually changing the situation.
He is gradually changing the face of the economy; he is gradually making Nigerians to realize that diversification of the economy is the only solution in the long run for our economy to take us out of the woods. This was very well accepted and things are getting on. Yes, oil price has dropped – even though recently it has started picking up a little – it has dropped and we are getting much, much less than what we used to get. There are so many other areas we have neglected for so long like agriculture, solid minerals and so on and so forth which we can exploit for our benefits and that is what is happening. So, the economy will improve but it will take some time. It is not going to be immediately. It is not a situation where you can fix it immediately,” he said.
