“Senate Turning Into Tinubu’s Puppet,” Atiku Crises Ndume’s Removal From Chief Whip Position
Senator Ali Ndume’s resignation from his position as the Chief Whip of the Nigerian Senate has drawn criticism from former vice president Atiku Abubakar.
Ali Ndume, the Chief Whip, fired Ndume, the National Assembly member for Borno South, on Wednesday for his criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s leadership.
Tahir Monguno (Borno North) took his place.
Atiku lambasted the Senate leadership over the dismissal in a statement released on Thursday, calling the upper house President Tinubu’s puppet.
“Our National Assembly, particularly the Senate, is consistently posing as though it is reversing course in its fundamental duties and has turned into the President’s puppet,” he stated on X.
Senator Ali Ndume only made this last week’s demand on the President to take accountability and act to alleviate the nation’s severe hunger and poverty.
Paradoxically, the @NGRSenate removed him from his primary position as the Senate’s Chief Whip in reaction to his patriotic warning.
In the general election of 2023, President Tinubu was also charged with exhibiting autocratic tendencies by the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate.
Additionally, he attacked the Tinubu administration, claiming that its excesses run counter to democracy’s guiding principles.
“A governmental structure that would lessen the highhandedness of the executive arm of government was a fundamental worry for intellectuals as systems of governance evolved.
It was believed—and rightfully so—that a participatory form of government, one in which the people grant the government legitimacy, would better serve the interests of the general populace.
“And so, the legislative arm of government was conceived as a means of protecting the people from the authoritarian tendencies of wielders of state powers,
to ensure that the executive does not go overboard in the application of its powers.”
Unfortunately, Atiku said, “the Nigerian democracy under President Bola Tinubu’s current administration has become anathema to that
general principle of democracy as providing primary protection for the people against executive excesses.”
