Press Release
Senate President Bukola Saraki Replies APC Chairman Adams Oshiomohle
1. It is rather surprising that Mr. Adams Oshiomhole
is behaving like a rain-beaten chicken, crying all over the place about Dr.
Abubakar Bukola Saraki, as if the Senate President is the apparition haunting
his life and the sinking ship that he captains.
Senator Saraki and Mr. Oshiomhole |
2. Having decided not to join the pigs in rolling in
the dirt; we would not like to be involved in any meaningless exchange with the
demagogue now in charge of APC. However, because he claimed that he was
reacting to the issues raised by the Senate President during his World Press
Conference, we thought it necessary to give the APC chairman some
attention.
Alas, we found that instead of addressing any issue raised by the
Senate President, his press conference merely showcased his obsession and those
of his sponsors with Saraki's removal, which he did without any decorum
befitting of his age or his awarded office. He brimmed with hate, hurled
abuses, threw tantrums, told lies, huffed, puffed. In the end, he said nothing.
3. It is indeed amazing that the same Oshiomhole, who
is now describing Saraki as a politician of no consequence was the same one who
only a few months ago was crawling all over the place pleading for Saraki's
support to become chairman. We are sure that those who took him to Saraki
several times to plead his case must now be thoroughly embarrassed by his
reckless and uncouth manner.
4. By his conduct and utterances, Oshiomhole, who
accused Saraki of not acting in national interest needs to do more to convince
Nigerians that his desperate desire to become party chairman is not simply to
feed his over-sized ego.
5. The position of Oshiomhole and his cohorts in the
APC that the Senate President must resign is a mere wishful thinking. They will
continue to dream about their planned removal of the Senate President. They
will need 73 Senators to lawfully remove Dr. Saraki and they will never get
that in the present eight Senate.
6. The argument of APC that the Senate President must
come from a majority party; that the Senate Presidency is their crown and
National Assembly is their palace is only supported by ignorance and dangerous
delusion. First, the issue of which party is in the majority will only be
resolved when the Senate resume. Two, Section 50 (1) (a) of the constitution is
clear that any Senator can be elected as Senate President. If the only thing
left of the APC change agenda is to change the Senate President we can only
wish them goodluck.
7. Perhaps, Mr. Oshiomhole needs to be better educated
about our parliamentary history when he stated that "For the first time in
parliamentary history in Nigeria ,
we had a situation where the APC had majority of Senators and went on to elect
a PDP as Deputy Senate President". Where is Mr. Oshiomhole when Senator
John Wash Pam of the Nigerian People's Party (NPP) became Deputy Senate
President in the Second
Republic even when the
National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had the majority. The same thing happened in
the House of Representatives when NPP's Rt. Hon. Edwin Umeh Ezeoke was elected
Speaker in an NPN majority House. But then, it would require a level of
education to understand these things.
8. What hypocrisy! To think that this same APC were
jubilating when Rt. Hon. Aminu Tambuwal retained his position after he defected
from the PDP and still retained his seat, even when his new party was in the
minority. These are people whose standards of morality are infinitely elastic.
9. We are sure the remaining APC Senators need to do a
lot of work to bring Oshiomhole up to speed about parliamentary practice. His
ignorance are too clear in his comments about how the Senate was adjourned on
July 24, 2018, the distribution of committee chairmanship in the Senate and the
difference between the post of Senate President and Minority Leader.
10. He has made so much song and dance about Mr.
Godswill Akpabio resigning as Senate Minority Leader when he left the PDP to
join APC. For this, Akpabio has become his hero and a symbol of honour. He
obviously does not understand that the post of Minority Leader is a strictly
party affair. And the PDP simply decided who to give it as it is not even a
position that was mentioned in the constitution. Whereas, the Senate President
position is a constitutional creation, which required majority votes of all the
members. Again, we don't expect people whose only experience in politics is at
the provincial levels to understand this. No wonder they are talking of crowns
and inheritance.
11. The fair distribution of the Committee
chairmanship is one of the stabilizing factors in the 8th Senate and has helped
it in achieving more than all its predecessors.
12. We need to inform this divisive element who now
leads APC that if he wants to know why the 2018 budget was delayed, he should
ask the heads of the MDAs. We reckon that should be easy for him since he is
now their 'headmaster', moving around with canes to whip ministers into line.
13. Oshiomhole once again demonstrated his lack of
sense of history by talking of Buhari winning more votes in Kwara than Saraki.
We are sure President Buhari himself will disagree with the APC chairman. We
invite the APC chairman to look at the figures of votes secured by the
President in 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015 to know that the difference is clear,
like a commercial advert stated.
14. We hereby assure this garrulous, tactless and
reckless APC chairman that a million of Adams Oshiomhole cannot remove Saraki
as Senate President. His illegal plots, can only feed his insatiable ego and
keep him awake at nights. But it will remain an exercise in futility.
Signed:
*Yusuph Olaniyonu
*Yusuph Olaniyonu
Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the
Senate President, Bukola Saraki
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