The Senate President Ahmad Lawan has said that the leadership of the National Assembly did not receive the sum of $10 million to push for the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).
He cautioned that despite the “free speech” that characterises the current administration, Nigerians should be mindful of the information that is passed around, as they could dent the image of the leaders and the country.
Reports floated that the Senate President had received the sum of $2 million, while the Speaker of the House of Representatives was given $1.5 million in graft, with the rest of the money given to other members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Lawan, during a briefing in Abuja following a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, said that such stories could “cause unnecessary damage to the reputation of people”.
He said, “But of course, bigger legacies will be that the orientation of Nigerians is such that they are free to say whatever they want to say about their government, about their leaders, and so on and so forth.
“And that we have really established ourselves as an administration, where people can say anything or everything about the President about the administration about members of National Assembly, they call us names. And this is part of the intangible dividends of democracy.
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“But we are determined to ensure that the space is wide open for everybody to say whatever he wants to say. But I will advise don’t say things that are bad because people are in the habit of doing that and recently somebody said $10 million was given to the Speaker and the Senate President to give to members of the National Assembly to pass three percent development fund. That is funny, but also very serious.
“I really want to take this opportunity to take exceptions to those kinds of unwarranted unprovable false and fake information being fed to the Nigerian public. And the danger people will face with this is you cause unnecessary damage to the reputation of people.
“I had an occasion to take someone to court because of this kind of thing about three months ago. But Nigerians are better judges and lawyers.
“So the freedom of expression is there, probably more than anywhere in the world. But I want to advise that Nigerians should always think about their leaders and their administration and their governments in positive light.
“And if they have issues they think very strongly about, let them speak the truth. And we are prepared to take corrections that we feel should be able to make us do better.”
On the fight against insurgency in the country, Lawan said that the National Assembly had put forth a request for more resources.
He said, “Yes, I’m optimistic that not only Boko Haram, the insurgency because in addition to Boko Haram you have ISWAP and probably other tangential groups like that. I’m sure the new strategy by the current leadership of the armed forces are working.
“Boko Haram, having lost its leader and probably having lost so many commanders, some of them think they should just throw in the towel. Therefore, it’s one of those success stories of the fight against insurgency in the Northeast.
“We have asked for improvements in resources, we have asked for changing of guards in the area of those who were at the top of the echelon of the security services, particularly the armed forces and we have gotten that. So, I believe that this is one of the success stories, this is something that is real that is happening.
“What we need to do is to have a clearly defined national policy on how we deal with this because unless we have a strategy of dealing with this, we may be overwhelmed and it could deny us the opportunity of getting the best out of this surrendering.
“What do we need to do? We have to be prepared for the humanitarian resources that we have to make available. We need to screen (the repentant Boko Haram members) to ensure that those who are genuine and those who may just follow in for some reasons, but I don’t subscribe to the idea of saying forget about people who are surrendering, all of them are criminals and the rest of it.
“In the law of wars or something, when somebody surrenders, you have something to surrender and of course, maybe you’ll do some profiling and find out whether this someone is genuine.
“So, I believe that we should give people the benefit of the doubt, but we should also be very circumspect on those who may not be genuine in this, but we should accept people when they come and take the appropriate measures, get the right strategies on how to deal with the reintegration of such people into the community.
“Don’t throw them just into the community like that, because you need to do some other things to ensure that everybody is sanitised so to speak, before they are introduced into the society.”
