9th Assembly appendage of Presidency, dept of APC – Ex-lawmaker

Laide Raheem, Abeokuta

A former member of the House of Representatives, Oladipupo Adebutu, has knocked the leadership of the 9th National Assembly over the N37 billion budgeted for the renovation of the Assembly complex, noting the “NASS is simply an appendage of President Muhammadu Buhari.”

Adebutu, who represented Remo Federal Constituency between 2015 and 2019 at the Green Chamber, said though the NASS leadership under Senate President Ahmed Lawan and the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, was brilliantly constituted, the duo had turned the National Assembly into what he described as a “department” of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The ex-lawmaker gave this position in Abeokuta while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the end of year party organised by a faction of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Ogun State.

While bemoaning Nigeria’s high debt profile and describing it as “painful and unbearable”, Adebutu, flayed the Lawan and Gbajabiamila-led legislature for being a rubber stamp of the executive.

He declared that “such Assembly ultimately fails and it has started failing.

“As a former member of the National Assembly, I find it difficult to malign the institution. But I must say very sadly that the National Assembly, as brilliantly constituted, is an appendage of the inept government of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“It (National Assembly) is a department of the APC. A rubber stamp Assembly ultimately fails and has started failing,” he stated.