Senate President Godswill Akpabio has said the red chambers must thorough scrutinise all that all bills transmitted from the House of Representatives before concurrence,

Akpabio, who was reacting to allegations from the House of Representatives that the Senate has always denigrated the green chambers by ignoring all their concurrence bills, adding that the Senate will not abdicate its responsibility of reviewing legislation in the name of inter-chamber cooperation.

Akpabio emphasised that the Senate had already acted on several bills from the House and would continue to do so, but with due diligence.

“Last week, we attended to about six of those bills, and this week, I don’t know how many, but at least I know we are going to do two today, and we’ll continue to do so

“Let our brothers in the House of Representatives know that we cannot joke with anything that comes from there. It takes two hands to clap, and we’ll continue to work together.”

His remarks followed a recent resolution by the House of Representatives to suspend concurrence to bills from the Senate. The House had, during its plenary last Wednesday, July 2, expressed frustration over what it described as undue delay in passing its bills, noting that about 140 of them were still awaiting Senate concurrence. In protest, the House stepped down two bills sponsored by Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele.

Responding to the development, Bamidele explained that the Senate had not ignored the House’s bills, saying, “Only last week, this Senate concurred to six bills from the House of Representatives.”

“While we have the principle of chamber reciprocity, Mr. President, the principle does not necessarily mean for us garbage in, garbage out,” he said, adding that the Senate would continue to assess all concurrent bills with diligence and in the overriding interest of the Nigerian public.

The Senate, however, passed two bills originating from the House at Tuesday’s plenary.