Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
The National Chairman of the ruling All Prigressives Congress (APC), Comrade Adams Oshiomohle, has said that the party will follow due process to impeach Senate President, Bukola Saraki.
He said that there was no way Saraki will continue to hold on to his position, adding that he will be impeached according to the law.
Oshiomohle also vowed that the leadership of APC will work hard to ensure that Senator Saraki is defeated even in his senatorial election in Kwara come 2019 election.
In apparent reaction to Saraki’s criticism of the ruling party, Oshiomhole addressed a press conference on Friday saying that even before Saraki defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), his leadership of the Senate was designed to frustrate President Muhammadu Buhari’s efforts to turnaround the fortune of the country.
There have been allegations against the APC of a plot to remove the Senate President for defecting to the opposition PDP.
However, the APC national chairman, who insisted that Sen. Saraki must be impeached as Senate President, clearly stated that “Saraki’s time was over as Senate President.
“If he (Saraki) thinks that by saying that, he will preempt the APC from having him impeached, he is deceiving himself. I think that the time of Saraki is over, the way he has manipulated the politics of Kwara State, he failed to understand that the Nigerian project is far more complicated than being at the mercy of his own dynasty.
“He will not only be impeached, we will work hard to have him defeated as a senator in his own senatorial zone come 2019 by the people of Kwara State who are fed up with Saraki.
“Go and check the results of the elections that made him a senator and you will find out that the President got more votes from Kwara central than Saraki got for himself. So, he can’t claim that the vote the APC got from his Senatorial zone was because of him.
“And that is why his decamping from APC is of no political consequences as far as electoral issues are concerned. We tried to talk to him, not out of fear, but out of conviction that as a presiding officer, there are rules of engagement and we don’t want him to get so emotional as to affect those rules of engagements.”
While giving instances on how the Senate President has frustrated President Muhammadu Buhari led government, Oshiomohle said he had ensured that national budgets were delayed.
“So, when I said he has never put the interest of Nigeria first, I support this statement by reference to the deliberate delay of the budget and deliberate manipulation of the provisions in the budget in a way that will compromise the capacity of the government to address critical infrastructures.
“It is no longer a secret that as Senate President, he tried to conspire with others to create a semblance of division within the ruling party having failed to truncate the convention, when they assembled a handful of people who were neither delegates nor contestants for any office at the convention to purport to have formed a political party. There is nothing for me to add to the illegality of this action and the false foundation that Senator Saraki tried to leave than to adopt the well thought out presentation of Femi Falana.”
Speaking on the need for Senate to reconvene and approve the budget of INEC, Oshiomohle said: “Between Tuesday and Thursday, the senate was expected to discuss the supplementary budget for INEC. INEC requirement are not things that you buy from the shelf. You have to order them from the manufacturers and so, time is of the essence.
But the senate under Saraki adjourned without considering the matters before it including the budget for INEC.
“So, if Saraki adjourned the senate ahead of schedule to resume towards the end of nominations, can that act be said to coincide with national interest? If you decide to frustrate INEC by denying it the funds that it requires, can you be said to be a defender of democracy? If INEC don’t get their funds and therefore are unable to conduct credible election, will that not lead to further consequences for our democracy?” Oshiomohle asked.