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The President of the Nigerian Senate, Sen. Ahmed Lawan has stated that the leadership of the 10th National Assembly to be inaugurated on June will be determined by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, not the opposition.

He made this known during an interview with state correspondents at the Presidential Villa Abuja on the backdrop of the Eid el-Fitr festivities.

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Lawan explained that although the opposition is an integral factor to consider with regard to bills being passed, he argues the APC is not in trouble but that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, and other party leaders will decide the fate of the National Assembly’s leadership.

I’m his words: “I don’t think opposition parties are planning to usurp because it is presumptuous that the APC will not be a united party.

“APC is a united party and the opposition party will simply work with the APC majority for us to have stability, because there is no way an opposition will decide who should be the senate president, who should be the speaker. It is our party and other leaders that will decide which zone or whoever, and the rest of us in the party will key in and of course the opposition would have no option but to support.

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“I don’t see anything wrong in the opposition talking to us, or we’re talking to the opposition to ensure that we’re on the same page, because we need the opposition to ensure that we get most of our constitutional amendments, when the time is right, passed — because we can’t have the 73 in the Senate. You need 73 senators at least for you to have any constitutional amendment.

“So, you would need the opposition. That’s why it is very, very critical. It is very essential that you work with the opposition right from the beginning. Don’t ever think the opposition should be pushed away. I don’t believe in that, I only believe in the very bipartisan chamber because it is more productive. It is more stable, it’s calm, and it gives you the kind of outcome that you will never get with a very rancourous chamber. And I’ve seen it, we have done it”, he said.

On the highs of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, he argued that Infrastructure was one, asking “Is there any part of Nigeria that today does not have one infrastructural development or the other?”

On the Southeast he said, “The South-East has the Second Niger Bridge. The Second Niger bridge was something that defied all the previous administrations, right from 1999, when President Obasanjo held sway. Then late Yar’Adua of blessed memory, then Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. All the PDP administrations came. They went there, they said they broke ground, or [did] groundbreaking, but that was where it stopped. Nothing else happened until the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari came. Like a joke, people thought it was going to be the same thing. But we have proven everybody wrong”.

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