Budget presentation: "Saraki, Dogara’s inability to deliver speech, sign of weakness" - Akpabio

Former Senate minority leader, Senator Godswill Akpabio, has said that Senate president Bukola Saraki and the speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara’s inability to deliver speech during President Muhammadu Buhari’s budget presentation is a sign of weakness.

Legit.ng reports that Akpabio gave the warning, on Wednesday, December 19, in an interview with journalists shortly after Buhari presented the 2019 Appropriation Bill at the National Assembly in Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Saraki and Dogara were expected to make opening and closing remarks respectively before and after the presentation.

However, the rowdy session at the presentation made it impossible for the two presiding officers to deliver their speech.

Reacting to the development, Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa Ibom state, said Saraki and Dogara could not speak because they were no longer qualified to do so.

“They really couldn’t talk because they shouldn’t be sitting on those seats since they now belong to a minority party.

“When I was in the minority party, I was the minority leader; I wasn’t the Senate president.

“So I will expect that what has happened today should be a wake up call on the Speaker and the Senate President to resign peacefully,” he said.

On the rowdy session, he said such action was a characteristic of a parliament all over the world.

“But you could also notice that the majority party, the APC, showed its strength. There was a lot of quietness; there was a lot of silence whenever the President was making key points. The rest were just normal nuances of politics,” he said.(NAN)

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari presented 2019 2019 Appropriation Bill on Wednesday, December 19, at a time the National Assembly was experiencing some level of chaos owing to the series of protest by the staff of the National Assembly under the umbrella body of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) over what they called poor working conditions.