National Assembly will not operate as usual, says Ndoma-Egba

The former head of the seventh senate, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, has said the new senate will not operate as usual. Speaking to reporters in Calabar yesterday about his expectations for the next National Assembly, Ndoma-Egba said: "It's going to be a very interesting National Assembly because before we only had two major parties, one in government and one in opposition. If you look at the numbers now, no party can produce a two-thirds majority.

He said the incoming Senate "can only pass questions that require a simple majority, like now in the Senate result the CPA already has a simple majority, but when it comes to those important constitutional questions where you need two-thirds, you need to get into the covenant and that's where the beauty of democracy lies, the haggling and arguing and talking." You're going to see some improvement in the legislative process and for you to even be able to stabilize the place, you have to make sure that the members of all these other parties are brought together in a manageable bloc, so it's going to be quite interesting." On the issues of irregularities and complaints about the democracy of the country, Ndoma-Egba said that there is no perfect democracy anywhere. "Democracy keeps evolving step by step; ours is still evolving. Ours is only 24 years old, the America is over 200 years old and there are still problems. We should remove this mindset that everything America tells us is correct. Democracy grows according to its environment and they must allow us to develop our democracy. Yes, the election was not perfect; I have a problem, for example, with the election in Ikom. We will take their comments but we will try to improve our system.