Federal lawmakers and journalists were Tuesday morning prevented from enetering the National Assembly by masked operatives of the Department for State Services.
Some lawmakers including Senators Rafiu Ibrahim(PDP, Kwara South) and Ben Murray-Bruce (Bayelsa East) others were stranded at the main gate of the assembly complex.
“We have been refused entry into the National Assembly by DSS operatives,” Senator Ibrahim told newsmen Tuesday morning.
“We are waiting for the rest of our colleagues to come. The we will see how many of us they want to kill. We have told this number of operatives is not enough. they should go and bring more men to prevent us from entering Nigeria’s symbol of democracy.”
The National Assembly is on recess until September 26. But an aide to Senate President Bukola Saraki said on Monday that the leadership of the National Assembly will be meeting today to deliberate on urgent national matters.
The notice of the emergency meeting came hours after the senior special assistant to the president on national assembly matters Ita Enang pleaded with the leadership of the national assembly to reconvene to attend urgent issues such as the 2019 elections budget.
He said the country risks a total government shutdown if the National Assembly did not reconvene soon.
“So, there may be a complete government shut down and I know Nigerians will not like it; that is why we are appealing to the National Assembly to reconvene,” Enang said.
But Nigeria’s leading opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), said the call for the National Assembly to resume before the September 26 earlier scheduled is a matter of Enang’s personal wishes.
But a spokesman for the People’s Democratic Party said on Monday that the call was a part of the APC government to create “anarchy” and impeach Saraki, who fortnight ago defected to the PDP.
“We must not allow those who have no respect for laws to take charge of our lives, because what they are plotting to do has a huge capacity to create anarchy for the nation,” PDP spokesman Kola Ologbodiyan told News Agency of Nigeria.
“The NASS has only gone for their annual recess and it is within their right to choose when to come back,” he said.
