Leaders of the All Progressives Congress with ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abeokuta, Ogun State on Saturday.
SOME Peoples Democratic Party’s senators
are set to dump the ruling party for the opposition All Progressives
Congress as soon as the senate resumes in January.
A source told our correspondent in Abuja
on Monday that the number of PDP senators, who have concluded their
defection plan, was “enough to alter the configuration of the upper
chamber.”
The senators are said to be aggrieved
over what they described as the shoddy handling of their party affairs
by its elected officials and they are set to join their 37 colleagues in
the House of Representatives who defected from the PDP to the APC last
week.
One of the senators confirmed to our correspondent in Abuja on Monday that their movement to the APC had become fait accompli.
The senator, who craved anonymity, said,
“The country should be restructured on the foundation of truth. That is
our position. We will soon join the APC like our governors and our
colleagues in the House of Representatives. This will happen in January
by God’s grace.
“We are in court already and the court
has fixed January 22 for hearing. Already INEC had said it lacked the
powers to declare our seats vacant. So we are on course.”
The source added that a step in that
direction had been taken last week Wednesday when the aggrieved senators
and members of the House went to court to restrain the leadership of
the National Assembly and the PDP from declaring their seats vacant in
case they defect.
The senator who spoke to our correspondent is from the South-South zone.
A Federal High Court, sitting in Abuja,
had last week restrained the leaderships of the PDP, the National
Assembly and the INEC, from declaring vacant, the seats of federal
lawmakers because of defection to another party.
The injunction specifically affected the
National Chairman of the PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur; Senate President
David Mark; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu
Tambuwal; and the INEC.
The order by Justice A.R. Mohammed was
sequel to a motion filed by 79 lawmakers in the National Assembly, made
up of 22 senators and 57 members of the House of Representatives.
The lawmakers, among others, sought an order of the court restraining the defendants from declaring their seats vacant.
The 22 senators named as plaintiffs
were, Bukola Saraki (Kwara Central), Bello Gwarzo (Kano North), Senator
Abdullahi Adamu (Nasarawa West), Senator Magnus Abe (River South-east),
Wilson Ake (Rivers West), Senator Shaba Lafiagi (Kwara North), Danjuma
Goje (Gombe Central) ,Aisha Alhassan (Taraba North), and Ali Ndume
(Borno South).
Others were, Ahmed Zannah (Borno
Central) Simeon Ajibola (Kwara South), Bindowo Jubrilla (Adamawa North),
Abdulaziz Usman (Jigawa North-east), Danladi Sankara (Jigawa
North-west), Abdulmumuni Hassan (Jigawa South-west), Hassan Barata
(Adamawa South), Umaru Dahiru (Sokoto South), and Ahmad Maccido (Sokoto
North).
The rest were Ibrahim Gobir (Sokoto
East), Garba Mohammed (Kano Central), Isa Galaudu (Kebbi North) and
Ahmed Alkali (Gombe North).
Some of the senators listed as plaintiffs in the matter had however dissociated themselves from the defection plan.
To date, no PDP senator has formally
declared membership of the APC unlike their 37 House of Representatives’
colleagues who defected to the APC last week.
And while the PDP has lost majority
membership in the House to the APC, the ruling party still controls the
majority in the senate with 73 PDP senators against 33 for the APC.
Labour Party also has three while the All Progressives Grand Alliance
has only one senator.
