Ekweremadu who spoke
through his media aide, Mr. Ismail Omipidan, told the Punch on Sunday, July 24,
2016, that he had no reason to step aside as the Deputy Senate President as he
was duly elected into the office.
Ike Ekweremadu, the
embattled deputy president of Nigeria’s senate, has vowed not to resign from
the office despite the insistence of the ruling party, All Progressives
Congress, that he should be removed.
He recalled that several public
office-holders had defected from his party, the PDP, to the APC without any
noise from the latter, adding that the APC had produced either the Speaker or
Deputy Speaker in some states’ Houses of Assembly where the party was in the
minority.
Ekweremadu stated that the
PDP had corrected the National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun,
when he recently faulted his occupation of the office.
“The call for Ekweremadu’s
resignation also exposes the hypocrisy of some APC stalwarts. You will recall
that when Tambuwal defected (from the PDP) to the APC, all the notable leaders
of the party, including Lai Mohammed who was the National Publicity Secretary
of the APC, stated clearly that there was nowhere in the constitution where it
was stated that the Speaker (of the House of Representatives) must be produced
by the majority party; that was their argument. (The current Majority Leader of
the House) Femi Gbajabiamila also said so,” Omipidan said.
“What has now changed? The
constitution has not been rewritten; it is the same constitution. And it is
very clear that ‘the senators shall elect the Senate President and the Deputy
Senate President from amongst themselves.”
Omipidan also recalled that
under the first tenure of Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State, the ruling APC
produced the speaker of the House of Assembly while an opposition party
produced the deputy speaker. He also recalled that an opposition APC had
produced either speakers or deputy speakers of Benue and Plateau states’ Houses
of Assembly.
“Where you don’t have a
clear majority, there has to be some alliances to make the legislative work go
smoothly. These things happened in the states but they never raised eyebrows
then,” he added.
One of the aides of the
Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, who also spoke to the newspaper on
condition of anonymity, stated that the APC currently lacked the popularity in
the Senate to unseat Ekweremadu, stressing that removing Ekweremadu would be
easier for the APC if all its members were on the same page, unlike their PDP
counterparts who were united.
“Today, the APC has a
divided house while the PDP senators – over 40 of them – are all together,
working together. It is a more complex issue,” the source said.
“it takes a simple majority
to elect the senate president and the deputy senate president but it will take
two-thirds of the senators to remove any of them, which the APC currently
lacks.”
Confirming this, Senator
Shehu Sani, an APC senator, said it would be difficult for the APC to effect
Ekweremadu’s removal when its senators had been factionalised.
“The issue of removal of
Ekweremadu; it is not impossible but it has a lot of consequences. You cannot
achieve the removal of Ekweremadu until there is a united APC senators.” Sani
said.
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