The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum (Downstream), Senator Magnus Abe, has said members of the House of Representatives who scaled the gate when they were barred by the police last Thursday from entering the National Assembly complex deserve commendations and national awards.
Abe spoke yesterday in Port Harcourt at the grand finale of the Yoruba Week, 2014 and formal launch of the N500 million Yoruba House.
Abe said there was nothing wrong in the action of the lawmakers, noting that what they did was in the defence of the independence of the legislature.
“People were talking about lawmakers who scaled the fence. I want to say that those lawmakers are the true defenders of the independent of the legislature. They should be given national awards for what they did”, he said.
Abe said they were right in scaling the gate in order to gain entry into the National Assembly complex to be able to perform their duty as the representatives of the Nigerian people.
He also said the action was to prove a point that no force or power can stop the national legislature from meeting, adding that a bad precedent would have had been laid if the lawmakers had beaten a retreat during the invasion.
His words: “If they have to scale the fence, they will scale it and they did so (that) the Nigerian people could meet to discuss the problems of Nigeria. How can anybody say they have not acted honourably?
“In the words of Barry Goldwater, the American politician, and I quote, ‘moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue and extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice’.
“So, if they acted extremely to defend the liberty of the Nigerian people, they should be congratulated and honoured for what they did. If they had gone back, then they would have created a history that any power can stop the national legislature from meeting.
“They acted in the defence of the Nigerian people. So, I want to thank them and congratulate them. The only thing that I was telling my son is that I felt very sad that I didn’t come there in time to join them to climb the fence. I would have climbed the gate with them.
“There is no controversy. Spin doctors have appeared on the scene to try to colour what is a national embarrassment to this nation. You remember that similar thing like that was happening here in Rivers State; a reign of impunity and I almost lost my life.
“If you remember then, I wrote a letter then to the Senator David Mark, the President of the Senate to say that, today, it is Senator Abe, nobody is saying anything. Tomorrow, it may well be Senator Mark. And as you can see, all of us were tear gassed right inside the National Assembly complex.”
Source: CKN Nigeria
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