June 26, (THEWILL) – The Leadership of the Senate has dared Senator Orji Uzor Kalu and 2 other Senators who are allegedly behind the propaganda making the rounds about a planned defection of APC Senators to the People’s Democratic Party, (PDP).
THEWILL recalls that a national newspaper on Sunday carried a story that 22 All Progressives Congress (APC) senators have perfected plan to dump the ruling party by decamping to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), thereby giving the major opposition party the majority in the Red Chamber.
According to the newspaper, these APC senators have decided to join force with their colleagues who are loyal to Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari who contested the Senate President position, but lost to Senator Godswill Akpabio.
THEWILL gathered that the story, according to our source, was sponsored by “Senator Kalu and a few desperate senators, who want to eat their cake and have it.”
It was further gathered that it is the jostling for other Senate Principal positions and Standing committee chairmanship that is pushing Kalu and cohorts to threaten to dump APC and that they want to use this to negotiate.
A source within the Senate Leadership informed THEWILL that the Senate leadership is not taking the threat as a serious one and that it is waiting for them to carry out their action and see the repercussions.
”It’s basically a desperate negotiation tactics in a bid to hustle for good committees. It is dead on arrival and an empty threat”, the source said.
The source said that the current leadership of the senate does not take them seriously and rather looks forward to their decamping, so that their seats will be instantly declared vacant and a bye election scheduled in their senatorial districts immediately.
”You know the condition that allows you to freely defect from a party that got you elected. APC as of today is not in any crisis . So where do they stand in all their threat? It’s simply childish blackmail and only serves to destroy their reputation further. We know the 3 senators behind this story.”
”If they decamp, It will be very interesting to watch them try and win back their senatorial seats in a bye election after openly and repeatedly defying the President and their political party in the lead up to the Senate Presidency elections”, the source told THEWILL.
AYO ESAN, has been actively reporting and analyzing political events for different newspapers for over 18 years. He has also successfully covered national and state elections in Nigeria since the inception of this democracy in 1999.
