Moshood Adebayo
The Centre for Policy Advocacy and Leadership Development (CPALD), has supported the position of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) on Senator Ahmed Lawan as its candidate for the Senate President position.
The centre, in a statement by its Director of Democracy and Governance, Comrade Joe Mesele, said it is in line with the international best practices.
He said: ‘’We at the Centre for Policy Advocacy and Leadership Development, alongside 10 of our sister civil society organisations, hereby, unequivocally state that we are on the same page in advancing the course of democracy in Nigeria, and, therefore, welcome the development, because it is in line with international parliamentary best practices.
‘’We’ve studied parliamentary developments in several advanced democracies and came to the conclusion that the leadership of those parliaments are usually members with the requisite cognate experience – usually leaders of the ruling party’s caucuses.
‘’Right now, the leader of the APC caucus in the senate is Senator Ahmed Lawan. He is, therefore, without sentiments, eminently qualified to hold the position.’’
The CPALD said those criticising the APC for supporting Lawan are simply ignorant of parliamentary ethics and norms the world over.
It called on other stakeholders to align with the initiative of the APC, in order to flow along with international norms and procedures in the election of the leadership of parliaments.
In order to ensure transparency of the process, the centre also canvassed that the election of the senate president of the 9th Assembly be done by open balloting.
‘’That way, Nigerians will know where each representative stands. In every parliament, the vote of every parliamentarian is made known to the constituents.
Each lawmaker is accountable to the people who voted him or her to represent them. Ours cannot be different; we need to know where each senator stands,” the group said.