Senators support Jonathan on national conference

The Upper House of Representatives has supported President Goodluck Jonathan's bid to convoke a national conference.

Disclosing the position of the Senate, the Chairman, Committee on Information, Media and Public Affairs,  Enyinnaya Abaribe, said that since the proposed conference would protect the nation's sovereignty, it was in line with the upper chamber's stance as earlier enunciated by its President, David Mark.

'The Senate has always canvassed the position that it will welcome a conference where all ethnic nationalities would converge to discuss all critical issues and proffer the very best way that will enhance national unity.

'The Senate's redline which was aptly factored into the President's broadcast is the conferment of a sovereign status on the conference', Abaribe said.

The Senate spokesman added that 'the Senate is happy that it is a conference that will hold with due respect to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended. It has always been the Senate's considered stand that there cannot be two sovereigns at a time.

'The Senate is therefore gratified with the development and sees it as an opportunity to address all of Nigeria's structural problems that keep agitating the mind of her ethnic nationalities.

'The Senate is confident that the conference's final outcome would go a long way to cement Nigeria's unity', he said.