Ekweremadu: How executive, legislative feud starts

The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said frosty relationship between the executive and legislative arms of government is mostly due to the excesses of the former which strives to impose leadership on the parliament in breach of the rule of law.

A drama had ensued ahead of the inauguration of the eight Senate when Senator Bukola Saraki of the APC and Ekweremadu of the PDP emerged as senate president and deputy senate president, respectively to the chagrin of some leaders of the ruling government.

Ekwremadu spoke yesterday in Abuja at the formal launch of the Responsive Political Party Programme (RPPP) of the International Republican Institute (IRI).

Ekwremadu said while the parliament was supposed to be an authentic platform for political parties to feel and respond to the pulse of the masses, there was often lack of synergy between the parties and their members in the parliament.

“The frosty relationship often begins with executive excesses couched in party supremacy which strives to impose leadership on the parliament.

“In the executive that usually face of belligerence follows, the parliamentarians would naturally rally around their popularly elected leadership in defence of the principle of separation of powers.

“Even when such imposition succeeds, it hardly lasts, as the history of the National Assembly in the current democratic dispensation clearly shows,” Ekweremadu said.

He said the party, by implication, became the coordinating platform, but that this had unfortunately not been the case, as there was a revolting disconnect between the parties and their political office holders with the cases being that of the “tail wagging the dog rather than the dog wagging the tail.”