The crisis of confidence in the All Progressives Congress (APC) resulting from the emergence of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, seem to be doing more damage to the party with Lai Mohammed, the party’s National Publicity, giving a hint that Saraki could be sanctioned by the party for indiscipline.
He also described Saraki and Dogara as carrying out the bidding of the PDP and thus could be more described as pro-PDP.
But Saraki, on Wednesday, described his alleged romance with the PDP and plot to return to the party he dumped months before the election as news being carried by mischief makers.
Mohammed, in a television programme, said Saraki and Dogara betrayed the party by putting themselves up for election. He revealed that the party was at crossroads on how best to sanction the duo as a lesson to others.
Earlier, Senator Ahmed Lawan and Femi Gbajabiamila faction of the National Assembly had vowed to seek legal action against Saraki and Dogara alleging that their emergence was a coup.
They also blamed the Clerk of the National Assembly for going ahead with the elections in their absence.
Mohammed however, said there is public fear that the APC could lose its majority in the National Assembly to the PDP as the situation is becoming difficult to manage.
Mohammed, whose party has been blamed by some Nigerians of creating its current travail, said the party had not done anything wrong in trying to put its house in order before the inauguration.
He told the panelists: “Yes people have expressed that concern but how do you maintain cohesion and discipline in the country and the same time ensure that you continue to maintain the majority in the house? Now what happens if this goes unpunished and unquestioned? Then anybody in the party can do what they like.
“So this is the dilemma the party is facing. The dilemma within the party is how on one hand we ensure cohesion and discipline within the party and the same time ensure that the matter does not deteriorate.
“The real danger the party faces now is having the leadership of the national assembly which you cannot call your own. The leadership of the national assembly that does not share your agenda. The leadership that does no share your vision.
“If you understand how the National Assembly works and the kind of power the leadership has, you will understand the danger of what happened yesterday.
“For instance today, we can no longer talk about having leadership caucus in the National Assembly because the leadership is made up of both the PDP and the APC.
“So there is nothing personal to APC that can be discussed in confidence without the PDP knowing. It means if a letter goes to the President to the Senate, it means it will go to the leadership of the PDP, APC, everybody even before our own members read it. It is quite a serious issue.”
Maintaining that the APC could sanction them at this point, Mohammed added: “when we were campaigning, we campaigned against the PDP because we believed that the PDP after 16 years did not live up to the expectations of Nigerians.
“Now if any of our members now want to be Senate President or Speaker and he is going to rely on the same opposition that was displaced and in total defiance to the party’s directives, its treachery.
“If 57 people voted to elect Senate President, that speaks volumes. That means there are only 8 senators from the APC that joined the 49 senators from the PDP.
“If Femi scored 174 votes, that means out of the 209 members of the APC in the House of Reps, only 30 moved over.
“So clearly, what happened yesterday was rebellion by a very small minority of the members elect, that is why we call it treachery.
“The meeting (between the members and Buhari scheduled prior to the inauguration) did not hold for two reasons. One, those members of the party that were bent on disobeying the party directives did not turn up and while the President was preparing to come to attend the meeting with all other faithful, loyal members of the party, he was informed they had already started voting in the upper chambers and at that point in time there was no point for him to come to join the meeting.
“That is why we now asked our members to go back to the National assembly while we went to the presidency.”
In reaction, Saraki, said he was not willing to dump the APC for the PDP that had lost relevance in the country. He described the insinuation as absurd and laughable.
He also described President Muhammadu Buhari’s reaction to Tuesday’s election of National Assembly leaders as a “great mark of leadership” and a demonstration of the President’s commitment to democracy.
In a statement issued by his media office on Wednesday, Saraki commended Buhari for remaining steadfast in his commitment to the principle of non-interference in National Assembly politics even in the face of great pressure on him to act otherwise.
“This shows that Mr. President is a man of great conviction who, in his own words, belong to everyone and to no one,” Saraki said.
According to him, “it is just cheap blackmail by political adversaries who want to call a dog a bad name in order to hang it. And those making such desperate allegations should remember that I willingly left the PDP on matters of principles when the party was in power.
“Is it now that the party is out of government and in opposition that I will now return having worked so hard for my party in the last general elections?”
He stated his commitment to the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying he remains a loyal party member and a leader of the party, committed to contributing his quota to building the party and helping it to deliver its promise of change to Nigerian people.
He urged all members of the National Assembly to put politicking behind them and settle down for the proper business of legislating.
“Our country is going through very trying times. We have the challenge of insecurity in the North East. The massive problem of youth unemployment and general economic challenges occasioned by marked fall in revenue,” he said.
“All these against the huge public expectation that propelled our party into office. We have pursued our legitimate aspirations appropriately.
“Now that the issues have been settled, we need to move on in the larger interest of our people, without whose mandate we would not have been in a position to aspire to these positions in the first place.”
He stated his readiness to embrace every member of the Senate regardless of their political leanings in the leadership elections just concluded.
