State governors elected
on the platform of the All Progressives Congress have resolved to do all within
their powers to ensure that Senator Ike Ekweremadu is removed as the Deputy
President of the Senate, Punch has learnt.
Punch’s correspondent
learnt that this was the fallout of the two-hour meeting the governors had with
President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on Tuesday.
The Chairman of the
Progressives Governors Forum and Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, had
initially told State House correspondents at the end of the meeting that the
governors had decided to intervene in the crisis in the National Assembly,
without giving details of their intervention.
But a source at the
meeting told one of Punch’s correspondents that the consensus at the meeting
was that it was an aberration for Ekweremadu, who is a Senator from the
opposition Peoples Democratic Party, to continue in office as Deputy President
of the Senate.
The source stated, “The
governors sympathised with the President (Buhari) for working with a National
Assembly that is largely seen as unfriendly.
“Particularly, they
observed that in the absence of the President of the Senate, the next person is
his deputy. They therefore agreed that it was an anomalous situation for a PDP
person to continue as the Deputy President of the Senate.
“They sought and got
the President’s permission to intervene in the matter in their own way.
“They argued that the
truth of the matter is that rarely is there any Senator that emerged without
the backing of their governors, hence the governors have some levels of
influence on the federal lawmakers.”
Okorocha had, on
Monday, said Ekweremadu should get ready to vacate his seat as the Deputy
Senate President.
Okorocha had added that
a candidate of the APC, Benjamin Uwajumogu, who contested in the last
Saturday’s rerun senatorial election in Imo State, would displace Ekweremadu as
soon as he joined the Senate.
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