Wike was far away from influencing emergence of minority leaders in Senate – Ned Nwoko

Senator Ned Nwoko representing Delta North Senatorial District in an interview with journalists in Abuja, Wednesday denied involvement of Nyesom Wike in the emergence of minority leaders.

Senator Nwoko’s reaction was at the backdrop of rumours making the round that the former governor of Rivers State was behind the emergence of 10th Assembly minority leaders on Tuesday.

Nwoko speaking to the group of journalists in his office at the National Assembly asserted that the insinuation from many Nigerians is baseless that only wike can’t be a member of seven political parties.

Nwoko explained: “The minority parties in the 10th Assembly consist of seven political parties and it is a requirement for those parties to nominate who will be the minority leader.

“The question is this, is Wike a member of seven political parties? No”.

“It is not true because according to the Senator president, he said the required signature for the emergence of the minority leader has been met and so he is going ahead to pronounce the leadership of the minority.

“Over two weeks now, some people have been going about to collect signature of Senators for this exercise and having met the requirements, there is nothing any body can do.

“PDP as a party know when the 10th Assembly was inaugurated and if they want to participate in the nominations of the leadership, how many timea have they callef for the meeting?

“So no body should cry over spilled milk”.

The Lawmaker further explained that the 10th Senate would be committed to legislating those things that are beneficial to Nigerians, rather than succumbing to being a rubber stamp.

He said the legislative arm is Independent from the executive, hence, they will be committed to ensuring good governance.

Commenting on what he can do as a Senator to reduce the suffering of Niger Deltans over Ogoni clean up and flooding, he said: “it is only God and maybe the government that can stop devastating floodings everywhere.

“That matter came up today on the floor of the Senate. It has been a recurring issue everywhere across Nigeria, and particularly the Niger Delta areas.

“It takes the brunt of the floods that start from Cameroon, through Benue and Niger down to Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers into the Atlantic ocean.

“So we take a brunt of it. We know that there are solutions. And these solutions must be addressed without further delay!

“One, the river channels must be dredged, and dredged immediately. I’m not talking about civil servants time, there’s urgency to dredge all these river channels. That’s number one of what must be done.

“Secondly, there is to build embankments along the waterfronts because, if you dredge the Niger and Benue rivers but you don’t build embankments to forestall future floods, it is a problem.

And thirdly, the solution is to build dams. These dams can contain whatever flood that we have. And the dams can be used to irrigate farms, the dams can be used to generate power, the dams can also be used to provide homes with water.

“So there are solutions, it is just a question of how soon can these be done.”