TheCable

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo says it will be suicidal to threaten Senate President Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives.

Osinbajo said this jocularly while speaking at the conference of speakers and presiding officers of the Commonwealth in Abuja on Tuesday.

Declaring the event open, the acting president said the media focus too much on the conflict between the executive and legislature.

He cited a newspaper report, which said he threatened the leaders of the national assembly, as an example of how the Nigeria media are fixated on the conflict between the two arms of government.

“On a lighter note, I don’t know the experiences of presiding officers from other nations present here on the relationship between the executive and the legislature by the press and the social media,” he said.

“Here in Nigeria, what makes news is conflict between the executive and the legislature. The more dramatic is it, the more newsworthy it becomes.

“If you follow things in the media, you’ll be confronted by the exclusive and breaking news stories, reporting several different issues of conflicts between the executive and the legislature.

“I’ll pick just one. There’s one of our popular newspapers that had the caption: ‘Acting President threatens leadership of the national assembly.’

“Now, if you see the combined sizes of the senate president and the right honourable speaker compared to mine, it’ll be a suicidal to threaten either of them let alone the two of them.”