Barely 24 hours to the inauguration of the eighth session of the National Assembly, the contest for the position of Senate President between Senators Bukola Saraki (All Progressives Congress [APC], Kwara Central) and Ahmad Lawan (APC, Yobe North) took a different dimension at the weekend, with 33 out of 59 APC senators openly backing the candidature of Lawan.
In statement issued on Sunday, Saraki claimed to have the backing of 65 senators across party lines for the contest tomorrow whom he promised to make public at briefing in Abuja.
Meanwhile, out of the 65 senators Saraki claimed to be behind him, 39 are from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has 49 senators-elect, since there are only 26 senators supporting him in the APC, after Lawan had secured the support of 33, who elected him as the sole candidate of the party for President of the Senate.
The depletion of Saraki’s support base among APC senators-elect, from the 35 earlier claimed by his group, the “Like Minds Senators”, to 26 on Saturday night, was as a result of last-minute defections on the part of some of them into the “Senate Unity Forum”, the Lawan group.
Notable senators who made such moves as was captured on Saturday night by Daily Independent at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, the venue of the APC shadow election in which Lawan emerged sole candidate, were Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central), Usman Bayero Nafada (Gombe Central) and Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa West), among others.
Saraki has said the outcome of the APC election was not binding on his aspiration as he will contest against Lawan on the floor of the Senate tomorrow morning since there are 65 senators across party lines on his side.
In the press statement signed by coordinators of the Like Minds Senators, Dino Melaye (Kogi West) and Ahmed Yerima (Zamfara West), he said, “We the senators-elect of Like Minds today June 6, 2015, on the invitation of our party, attended an interactive meeting with selected five members from each group, the Unity Forum and the Like Minds Group.
“Regrettably, the Unity Forum insisted on open ballot voting, which we discovered is different from the electoral process used to conduct the earlier election with the House of Representatives members-elect. To us, this open ballot voting is primitive; undemocratic and against universal electoral norms and practice.
“In the light of the above, we the senators-elect of Like Minds hereby insist on our position of open-secret voting process, which we believe is in consonance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and universal electoral values.
“As responsible citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria, and leaders in our own right, we have resolved and hereby state that we shall not be part of a process that promotes undemocratic electoral process that may resort to rancorous and uncivil situations, which inhibits the rights of individuals to vote for the candidate of their choice, as this process will further divide us than unite members of our party.
“In conclusion, we, the senators-elect of Like Minds, wish to state categorically that we will participate only in the constitutional election scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, 2015 in line with the rules of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“We, by this press release invite the media to a joint press conference by the 65 senators-elect of Like Minds drawn from across party lines on Monday morning, June 8, 2015″.
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