The
Presidency has mounted pressure on the leadership of the Senate to
persuade aggrieved Peoples Democratic Party senators not to carry out
their plan to dump the ruling party for the All Progressives Congress,
investigation by The PUNCH has revealed.
A source close to the Senate leadership
said that the Senate President, David Mark, had personally held a
series of meetings with some of the aggrieved senators with a view to
making them have a rethink.
“Meetings are being held to prevent the
PDP senators from going ahead with their planned action. I am sure the
peace moves are yielding fruitful results, “ he told one of our
correspondents on condition of anonymity on Sunday night.
He however did not say when and where the meetings were held and the number of aggrieved lawmakers in attendance.
One of the senators, who also
confirmed that the meetings were at the instance of the Presidency,
however said most of them had made up their minds to defect to the APC.
The lawmakers, who also did not want his
name in print, added that apart from the meetings, Mark had made it a
point to contact each of them daily on the telephone, advising them to
remain in the PDP.
The senator said, “Already some of us
have made up our minds to defect and there is no amount of pressure
that would stop us. We will formally write the Senate president when we
resume in January.
“However, there are some of us who
believe we could still listen to them. They have been discussing.
There have been meetings upon meetings which, from all clear
indications, are at the instance of the Presidency.”
At the moment, the PDP has 73
senators as against the APC’s 33, Labour Party’s three and one for the
All Progressives Grand Alliance.
In the House of Representatives
however, members who defected to the APC have vowed not to return to
the PDP despite alleged pressure on them to do so.
“No amount of pressure will force us
back to PDP. Our decision is a done deal and there is no point crying
when the head is already off”, one of the defectors, Mr. Zakari
Mohammed, told The PUNCH in Abuja on Monday.
Mohammed, a lawmaker from Kwara State, is the Chairman, House Committee on Media and Public Affairs.
Thirty seven PDP lawmakers in the
House had defected to the APC on December 18, citing “factions” in the
ruling party as reason.
The development gave the APC a slim
majority advantage over the PDP, with the former controlling 172
members, while the latter dropped to 171.
Findings showed that in a bid to compel
them to return to the party, the defectors had been put under
pressure by the PDP and the Presidency.
One of them said, “They have used all sorts of tactics, including the carrot, assuring us of return tickets in 2015.
“They have used the political machinery in our states and constituencies to get us to comply, but it is not working.”
The PDP and the Presidency have since
asked the Speaker of the House, Aminu Tambuwal, and the Independent
National Electoral Commission to declare the seats of the affected
lawmakers vacant.
But, the lawmakers stated on Monday that
they knew that such a thing was likely to happen, a reason they first
obtained a court order stopping it before they defected.
Speaking on the issue, the Chairman,
House Committee on Justice, Mr. Ali Ahmad, expressed surprise that, in
spite of the subsisting court order, the Presidency was still bent on
declaring their seats vacant.
Ahmad, a defector, observed that as
“recently as just days ago”, the Presidency was still talking of
declaring their seats vacant.
He added, “For us, there is no point commenting on this threat other than to wait and watch.
“The matter is in court; the threat by the Presidency to declare our seats vacant is contemptuous of the court decision.
“That is the subject of the matter in court and the court has ruled that our seats should remain intact.
“Therefore, it is the highest level of
contempt for the Presidency to be insisting that our seats should be
declared vacant in disobedience to the court order.”
Ahmad argued that it would have been
better for the Presidency to be “seeking some kind of political
solution to the problem, not to continue to insist on declaring our
seats vacant as if a court order no longer means anything in this
country.”
The lawmaker confirmed that the
defectors were being continuously harassed, but he noted that “it will
not work because we have passed that stage. Let them go to court.”
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