Efforts by the Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki, to nip in the bud the crisis set off by the recent election of the principal officers of the National Assembly may have hit a brick wall. The crisis of confidence which has pitted party leaders of the All Progressives Congress against the new principal officers of the National Assembly may take a turn for the worse this week. Contrary to the belief in several quarters, President Muhammadu Buhari, who is widely believed to have accepted the election of the principal officers as a fait accompli, is said to be unhappy with the leadership of the National Assembly, punchng reports.
Sources close to the two camps told our correspondents that President Buhari and senior party officials were still peeved that Saraki and other party members defied the party and formed an alliance with the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party. The APC senators loyal to Saraki had on June 9 boycotted a peace meeting convened by Buhari and the leadership of the party.
The meeting, which was attended by senators loyal to Senator Ahmad Lawan, the APC’s official candidate for the position of the Senate President, was going on when Saraki, with the support of his loyalists in the APC and all the PDP senators, emerged as the senate president unopposed.
Since then, the party has been in crisis, even though the APC had said it would work with Saraki. During the week, Saraki, paid a well publicised visit to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. His aim, reports say, was to seek the former president’s intervention in the crisis. Saraki wanted Obasanjo to pacify the APC leaders on his behalf. But Sunday PUNCH gathered that the former president’s intervention has failed to yield the results desired by Saraki and his camp. Read Full Article Here
Meanwhile, senators loyal to Senate President, Bukola Saraki, vowed to resist alleged moves by the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and other party chieftains to impose Senators Ahmad Lawan and George Akume as the Senate leader and deputy, respectively.
Senators Ahmed Sani-Yerima and Danjuma Goje, who spoke with journalists in Abuja, specifically declared that the plans by the leadership of the APC to fill the remaining four principal-officer positions with ranking members of the Senate Unity Forum was totally unacceptable. The Senators Unity Forum consists of loyalists of Lawan, who lost the Senate Presidency bid to Saraki.
The remaining leadership positions yet to be filled in the senate include, Senate Leader; Deputy Senate Leader; Senate Chief Whip; and Deputy Chief Whip. Punchng learnt that the APC leadership had allegedly been perfecting an arrangement which would see Lawan emerging as the Senate leader and Senator George Akume as his deputy.
The pro-Lawan group, which has the backing of Tinubu, was also said to have picked Professor Olusola Adeyeye (Osun) as the Senate Chief Whip, while Senator Abu Ibrahim from Katsina State would be his deputy. But Senator Sani-Yerima, a former Senate Deputy Minority Leader, and Goje, a former governor of Gombe State, insisted that the pro-Saraki Like Minds senators would resist imposition of principal officers on the chamber. Sani-Yerima maintained that the election of the four principal officers was the exclusive right of the zonal caucuses in the Senate.
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