APC Suffering From Post-Revolution Crisis –Shehu Sani

APC Suffering From Post-Revolution Crisis –Shehu Sani

Wednesday, July 22, 2015 1:13 pm


What about the fact that PDP is now sharing leadership of the National Assembly with APC. Are you in support of that?

We have gotten ourselves into a situation whereby in the National Assembly, particularly in the Senate, we have no options now than to learn to work with the PDP. I am not among those who endorse co-habitation between the APC leadership and the PDP in the National Assembly because a day before 9 June, we went to bed with the belief that the next day, we were all going to the National Assembly to elect our leaders. On the morning of that very day, we received text messages from the party that the President wants to meet with us at the International Conference Centre. I was a bit confused because the election of the Senate President was supposed to take place by 10 am and from my own understanding, the President had issued a proclamation convening the National Assembly to conduct election of the Senate President and the Speaker. And we also got a message that he wanted to meet us by nine. So, in the belief that we would go to the International Conference Centre and listen to Mr. President and from there proceed to the National Assembly, I went there and sat down. And I was confident when I saw the National Chairma of the party and other executives of the party like the National Secretary, Ogbonna Onu, Asiwaju and the other senators. But I became a bit worried when I looked at it and found out that it is only the Senators from the Lawan camp that were there. And to add to the confusion, within the few minutes of waiting for Mr. President, our phones were jammed by security agents who came to that place. So, we couldn’t receive messages; neither could we send messages out. And we didn’t know what was happening in the outside world. We were simply waiting for President. My thinking was that he was coming there to address us to unite the party so that we don’t go into an election with a divided house. But he never came. And then, suddenly when our phones started working, we learnt that elections had taken place and that the Senate President had emerged and the Deputy Senate President had also been produced and they were now moving to do that of the Speaker. And then, confusion now came into play and the national chairman (John Odigie Oyegun) even appeared to be confused more than even us. He didn’t know what to say. And there was pandemonium. Then, the members of the House of Reps rushed out of that meeting to the National Assembly to go and cast their votes. So, that was why the Gbajabiamila side was also there. Having done all these, the chairman simply had no answer to what happened. So, it was then that I led the insistence that he should lead us to Mr. President who he said was the one who called the meeting. And everyone agreed that we should move to see Mr. President. Someone was saying we needed an appointment. I said we didn’t need an appointment, this was a serious issue. And when we saw Mr. President, he was also as confused as we were in the sense that he also expressed his sadness that the position of the party was not taken. But what we couldn’t understand was the fact that it was the President who issued a proclamation that this Senate should convene and we also received a text message from the party that the President wanted to see us. Now, the Saraki side is right because the proclamation letter carries more weight than the text messages and the proclamation can only be invalidated if there was another letter written by Mr. President to stop them from going ahead with that. But now, we have the Unity Forum that has decided to be loyal to the party, to be loyal to the President, but have now found themselves at the receiving end of an officialdom whereby there was a letter to the Clerk of the National Assembly who did what the letter said he should do. President Buhari was placed in a very difficult situation. He cannot go against what has happened in the National Assembly, but he also has to find a way of appeasing those who are loyal to the party. And the moment he has pronounced support for Saraki and declared that what happened in the National Assembly is constitutional and is right, I, as a senator have no reason to start fighting Saraki or fighting the process because I am not in the Senate to fight. I am there to represent my people and as such, this is what became of it now. The Unity Forum have been loyal, but whether that loyalty is done within the ambit and the convention of what is supposed to be is something that should be left for another day.


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