PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari is scheduled to address a joint session of the National Assembly on Thursday.
Personal Assistant to the President on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie, disclosed this on her verified Twitter handle @Laurestar on Monday.
“President @MBuhari will address a joint session of the National Assembly (@nassnigeria) on Thursday, December 10, 2020,” the tweet reads.
The House of Representatives last Tuesday resolved to invite the President, with the Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila confirming that he accepted the proposal.
But, Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, urged the leadership of the House to meet with the President privately for national security reasons.
He told reporters in Owerri, the state capital, that the lawmakers could still get the same answers by meeting with President Buhari privately.
The governor argued that discussing issues of national security publicly could be counterproductive, insisting that an open discourse on national security could turn out to be a threat to national security itself.
According to him, apart from compromising national security, such an appearance would offer the enemies of the country the window to know the weakness of the nation.
The governor acknowledged that it was the constitutional responsibility of the parliament to demand answers from the executive on any matter, but counselled discretion when security is involved.
Uzodimma advised that the leaders of the House should seek an audience with the President on the matter after which they would brief other members at an executive session.
He advised the various committees on army, airforce and navy to interface with the security agencies for details on the security challenges facing the nation.
The Imo governor maintained that the elected representatives should exercise caution in the matter of national security lest the country may be made even more vulnerable in the process.
He deplored a situation where some people continue to blame the President for the security challenges without appreciating the efforts to curtail them.

By Bolaji Ogundele