Senate speaker Ekwe Ethuro has today (Wednesday) ordered police officers on tentatively deployed at Parliament to withdraw from the area as the House prepares to debate on amendments to the election laws.
This comes after complaints from both Cord and Jubilee senators over the presence of police in what they termed as a breach of parliamentary privileges.
While making the ruling, Ethuro said that the officers "were not brought to create fear in the way we carry out duties in the Parliament."
"I am going to direct the police and tell them we do not need them...we don't need them, they are not welcomed here," Ethuro said as quoted by the Star.
He said that the general expectation was that police facilitate access to Parliament as opposed to denying members the right to freely access the August House.
"There was no cause for me to call for police action because the members of this house for the last four years have conducted themselves in a good manner," he added.
He directed the National Security chairman to investigate the reasons that made police to come to Parliament.
He said: "This is not a police state. We are a democratic country."
The senators are meeting to re-examine the controversial changes that were made to the electoral laws and adopted by the National Assembly earlier on December 21.