Senate Suspends Plenary For One Week After Fight Among Lawmakers On Sitting Arrangement In New Chamber

The Senate has suspended plenary till May 7, to make final adjustments to the newly renovated Chamber.

This development was made known on Tuesday after the senators’ closed-door session following the controversy surrounding the sitting arrangement in the newly renovated Senate chamber of the National Assembly.

As earlier reported, there was a rowdy session among Senators in the upper legislative chambers on Tuesday over sitting arrangement in the newly renovated Senate Chamber of the National Assembly.

Three Senators got involved in a heated debate over the sitting arrangement in the chamber which is being used for the first time after months of renovation.

The Senator representing Gombe Central, Danjuma Goje, and the Senator representing Zamfara North, Sahabi Yau, expressed displeasure over the seats assigned to them and complained to the Majority Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele.

The argument began just as Senate President Godswill Akpabio was reading his welcome address following the five weeks of Easter and Sallah break, including the forced extension due to renovation works by the federal lawmakers.

According to the standing rules of the upper legislative chamber, senators should sit in order of rank.

It was learnt that Goje and Yau, sitting on the second row on the right side of the aisle, did not like the seats allocated to them by the Senate Committee on Services.

Sunday Karimi, senator representing Kogi West, is chair of the Senate Services Committee.

The four-term senators subsequently insisted that they should have been assigned seats in the front row on the extreme right—opposite the row of the majority leader and the deputy senate president.

After the argument, Kawu Sumaila, senator representing Kano south, called for a “point of order”, which was ignored.

Thereafter, Bamidele moved a motion for a closed session, and the lawmakers went into a closed session.