Pakistan National Parliament Delegation Visits Ekwerenmadu, Seeks Nigeria’s Support For IPU Presidency

Former deputy president of the Senate and member of the International Parliament for Tolerance and Peace, Senator Ike Ekwerenmadu, on Sunday said parliamentary diplomacy was a key instrument in building global peace and prosperity. Ekweremadu stated this when he received a high-level delegation of the National Parliament of Pakistan led by the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Pakistani Senate, Senator Mushahid Sayed, and the acting high commissioner of Pakistan to Nigeria, Mr Aamir Habib Abbasi.

The duo was in the residence of Senator Ekweremadu in Abuja to seek Nigeria’s National Assembly’s support for the bid of the chairman of the Pakistani Senate, Senator Muhammad Sanjrani, for the presidency of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU.

A statement made available to THE WHISTLER on Sunday in Enugu by Uche Anichukwu, media adviser to Senator Ike Ekweremadu, stated that, “The former speaker of the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States added that further to the bilateral and multilateral engagements of national governments, the world stood to enjoy greater peace, economic prosperity, and socio-political relations through the instrument of parliamentary diplomacy by their respective legislatures.”

While pledging his support for the Pakistan’s candidate for IPU presidency in the election scheduled for November 2020, Ekweremadu, who said Nigeria and Pakistan shared longstanding bilateral relations, including membership of the Commonwealth family, called for effective mechanisms for implementing and tracking the progress of inter-parliamentary initiatives.

The leader of the delegation, Senator Mushahid Sayed, said they were in Nigeria to seek National Assembly and Ekweremadu’s support, and described Professor Ekweremadu ‘as an influential leader, who enjoyed the respect and goodwill of parliamentarians around the world’.