Obasanjo’s corruption allegation against NASS: Senate moves to suspend Marafa, pro-Lawan senator

Vanguard reports:
THE Senate, yesterday, mandated its Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, to investigate alleged uncomplimentary remark made by Senator Kabiru Marafa against it in particular and the National Assembly in general.

Marafa, who was a strong supporter of Senator Ahmad Lawan’s Senate presidency bid, during the race for the seat, was alleged to have disparaged the Senate and by extension the National Assembly in a recent interview he granted a national daily(not Vanguard), where he allegedly backed former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent letter to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, that the legislature was stinking of corruption.

At its resumed sitting yesterday, the Red Chamber put a machinery in place for disciplinary action against Marafa, who is the spokesperson of Senate Unity Forum, SUF, a group that was at the forefront of Lawan-for-Senate-president bid.
The development came following the presentation of a copy of a newspaper, said to contain his uncomplimentary statement against the legislature before the Senate by Senator Isa Misau, APC, Bauchi Central.

But in a swift reaction on telephone, Marafa described the Senate President and other senators that asked that he be investigated as jokers even as he remained evasive on whether he would appear before the ethics committee when summoned. “I want to tell you that both Saraki and all those supporting him to continue to perpetrate illegality in the Senate are jokers,“he said. Senator Kabiru Marafa, APC, Zamfara Central, in the interview, as laid before the Senate, had supported former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s submission that corruption thrives in the National Assembly.

The outspoken senator in another interview in the same edition of the newspaper now before the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions, also called on the Senate President, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki to resign from his position in the face of his on going trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT on charges bordering on alleged false assets declaration.
“With this judgment, the honourable thing for Saraki to do, is to resign his position as Senate President , so as to save the already battered image of the Senate from further battering”, he was alleged to have said.

He also called on fellow senators in the interview to rise up in calling for Saraki’s resignation at this time , failure of which he said, may warrant recall of all of them as senators from their various constituencies. His words: “If the senate president refused to step aside, we expect Nigerians especially those who voted for us to represent them at the senate to ask questions. We expect them to ask us why we failed to take action despite the bad image that the development is creating for the federal parliament.

“Our constituents should even recall us if we find it difficult to take action. This is somebody who had committed constitutional blunder when he unilaterally increased the numbers of committees in the senate”.But the Senate through a motion moved by Senator Misau, APC, Bauchi Central, and seconded by Senator Mathew Urhoghide, PDP, Edo South, took serious exception to Marafa’s comments and ordered its committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petition, to interrogate him over the comment and forward appropriate recommendation to the Senate within a week.

Vanguard