Senate In Focus: Between 9th Senate And Legislative Agenda  

The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, marked his 64th birthday on Thursday, his last celebration at the Senate President’s guest house in Maitama.

Since becoming Senate President, Lawan’s staff have always organised a birthday celebration for him in Maitama, the Senate President’s guest house where the celebration is done with heavy cake and cards.

This year’s celebration only had two cards with a small cake – not up to the size he normally celebrates with.

While the staff thanked the Senate President Lawan for being a good boss, he responded by saying that he knows he is a stiff and thorough man who always ensures the right thing is done even at odd hours.

Lawan also said the Ninth National Assembly has delivered on its legislative agenda for Nigerians.

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According to him, the ninth assembly after its inauguration, stated its commitment to working for Nigerians with a robust legislative agenda that covered critical areas in need of immediate intervention.

Prominent amongst such areas, according to Lawan, are security, economy, revenue generation and collection, education and constitution amendment.

Speaking on the performance of the Ninth Assembly during this year’s birthday celebration, Lawan said: “We decided to be focused, strategic, tactical, patriotic, tolerant and patient in our work in the ninth Senate.

“We defined what we wanted to do in the ninth Senate when we were campaigning. We said we will work for Nigerians, and when we drew our legislative agenda after we were inaugurated, we worked on it. Thank God, almost everything we put there as a legislative agenda, we finished with them in a good way.”

He assured Nigerians that the National Assembly would continue to collaborate with the executive arm to ensure that the challenges posed by insecurity across parts of the country are nipped in the bud.

The Senate President, while lauding the efforts of the federal government in the area of infrastructural development, underscored the need to improve on revenue generation and collection for the same to be adequately sustained.

“One other challenge is lack of sufficient revenues for the government to undertake its numerous laudable and noble national development projects across the country.

“Most of what we do in terms of national development is to borrow funds for us to execute those projects.

“I think we have to work hard to improve our revenue generation and collection because it is not looking too sustainable that we tolerate people and some agencies of government, to misapply or not even declare the revenues they collect. We can’t continue with that”, Lawan said.

The Senate President stated that the upper chamber within the remaining period of its lifespan, would engage revenue generating agencies with a view to shoring up the country’s earnings.

He however advised the federal government to undertake a review of waivers and concessions already granted to corporate entities.

Lawan noted that doing so would provide more revenue to the government and cause a boost to the nation’s economy.

He said, “So, for us in the Senate, we have decided that for the remaining part, we will continue to engage with our revenue generating agencies until we get better outcomes from them. This is possible and has become imperative.”