The Minister of Information and
Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has revealed why it has been difficult for the
All Progressives Congress, APC, to remove Dr. Bukola Saraki as Senate
President.
Mohammed, speaking how the
problems being witnessed in the ruling party started, said that Saraki forced
himself into the office of the Senate President and made Ike Ekweremmadu, from
the opposition, his deputy.
The Minister quoted Saraki as
saying that ‘If you remove me, you are going to have PDP as Senate President’
adding that the Senate President had aligned and worked for the PDP all along.
Mohammed said this in an
interview with newsmen in Lagos, where be reacted to the gale of defections in
the APC.
He said that recent events in the
party did not come to him as surprise, adding that they were expected.
He said, “The foundation for what
you see today was laid the day the Senate President forced himself on the party
as Senate President.
“That was the day the foundation
for what you are witnessing today was laid because traditionally, it is the
party’s prerogative who becomes the presiding officers in the two houses. Here,
we were met with a fait accompli when Dr. Bukola Saraki, against the wishes of
the party, did the unthinkable by aligning with the opposition and making them
an offer they could not refuse.
“I can’t quite remember the
number, but almost the entire 40 plus senators in PDP voted for him. So, he
needed only a minority from the APC. We were all waiting for Mr. President to
come and address us on this issue at the International Conference Centre, it
was announced that he (Bukola) had emerged as the Senate President.
“From that day, we knew we had
two problems: one, we had a Senate President who imposed himself on the party,
and to make it worse, as an insurance, he arranged for an opposition person to
be Deputy Senate President; that makes it impossible for us to remove him,
hence his thinking, ‘If you remove me, you are going to have a PDP Senate
President.’
“From that day, we had a problem.
This is not a surprise at all. Of course, you could see the behaviour of the
National Assembly since then. We have a National Assembly in which we had a
clear majority in both houses, but which treated the executive with contempt
and actually slowed down the work of government.
“In 2016, 2017 and 2018, our
budgets were delayed. In 2016 and 2017, the earliest we got our budgets was
June. Key appointments, nominations and confirmations for key organisations
that could move the government forward like the CBN, like the NDIC, were
delayed.
“Really, it couldn’t have been
worse if the PDP had a majority in the National Assembly.”
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