- Acting President Yemi Osinbajo says the media focus too much on the conflict between the executive and legislature
- Osinbajo states that what makes news is conflict between the executive and the legislature
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has discredited media reports that he threatened Senate president Bukola Saraki and speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.
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Osinbajo also jokingly said it would be suicidal to threaten the Senate president and the speaker who are more in size compared to him.
The acting president made the statement on Tuesday July 25 in Abuja when addressing the conference of speakers and presiding officers of the commonwealth, The Cable reports.
Speaking on the backdrop of the media report, Osinbajo said the media focus too much on the conflict between the executive and legislature.
He said: “On a lighter note, I don’t know the experiences of presiding officers from other nations present here on the relationship between the executive and the legislature by the press and the social media,” he said.
“Here in Nigeria, what makes news is conflict between the executive and the legislature. The more dramatic is it, the more newsworthy it becomes.
“If you follow things in the media, you’ll be confronted by the exclusive and breaking news stories, reporting several different issues of conflicts between the executive and the legislature.
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“I’ll pick just one. There’s one of our popular newspapers that had the caption: ‘Acting President threatens leadership of the national assembly.’
“Now, if you see the combined sizes of the senate president and the right honourable speaker compared to mine, it’ll be a suicidal to threaten either of them let alone the two of them.”
Meanwhile, Kabiru Marafa, the senator representing Zamfara central, has revealed how President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) asked him to stop fighting Senate President Bukola Saraki.
Reports have it that Marafa said on Sunday, July 23, that he fought Saraki because the order was given to him by his party members and he stopped based on the same order.
NAIJ.com gathered that he was Saraki’s lone critic at the upper chamber, until he was made the chairman of the petroleum committee.
In the video below, NAIJ.com TV asked some Nigerians if they supported the call for the Senate to be scrapped. Watch responses.