Society Gists

Senate President Bukola Saraki paid President Muhammadu Buhari a visit on Friday November 4, 2016.

If you learned nothing else from that visit, you should take the following to the bank:

1. A frosty relationship can be smoothened

The Senate and Executive arms of government haven’t enjoyed the best of relationships in the Buhari era.

There’s been too much bad blood between both camps.

Too much for President Buhari’s liking, a State House source has told SocietyGists.

Friday’s meeting may have been brief, but it was all for a better working relationship between Buhari and the Saraki-led Senate in the future, Pulse was reliably informed by a top ranking official in the Presidency.
Saraki had said after the meeting: “We should not look at that as a reflection of the relationship. Don’t let us politicise very important issues. As we said, this is work in progress.”

Yeah, you read that right.

The relationship between the Executive and the Legislature is very much a work in progress.

2. That $30B loan rejection was on the agenda

“I came here to pray, I have finished praying and I just had a general felicitation with the president. It didn’t go beyond that”,Saraki said as he deflected questions from State House correspondents concerning whether the rejection of the $30B loan proposal from the Executive was on the cards.

Yeah right. Aso Rock must have the best praying ground around these days.

The loan request from the Executive was turned down by the Senate earlier in the week and Saraki visits the President as the week tapered off.

Make of that what you will.

Remember what they say about the Witch crying at night and the Child passing away at dawn?

Even President Buhari gave the agenda away in the following tweet:

3. President’s aides have been doing such a poor job

To be very frank here, Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma and Senior Special Assistant to Buhari on National Assembly matters, Ita Enang, have made a huge mess of Executive proposals sent to lawmakers recently.

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First, it was the 2016 budget proposal that was duplicated and laden with errors; and then we had the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) that was lacking in details and a loan request proposal that had no attachment.

It has been a comedy of errors from Buhari’s men.

Today’s meeting was supposed to address all of that.

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Trust us when we say the President’s loan request will be re-submitted to the National Assembly and speedily passed this time.

And we’ll remember this meeting as the moment when a relationship reset happened.