President of the Eighth Senate, Bukola Saraki, is to lead peace moves to pacify members of the Peoples Democratic (PDP) who lost out in the selection of the party’s leaders in the Ninth National Assembly.
This followed the party’s resolve to do a major reshuffle of its leadership in the Senate which resulted in the replacement of Clifford Odia (PDP, Edo Central) with Sahabi Yau (PDP, Zamfara North) as Deputy Minority Whip.
“The decision of the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) to replace Odia with Yau was informed by the need to reflect federal character and spread in the minority positions in the Senate and House of Representatives.
“Accordingly the party has resolved to appeal to Odia to, in the interest of the country, give up the position to the North West Zone. This is because the South South zone has two positions out of the 8 positions while the northwest zone was completely shut out,” a source in the party disclosed.
It was also learnt that the party has appealed to the immediate past Senate President, Saraki to spearhead the efforts to soothe ruffled feathers in Edo State where Odia comes from.
The choice of Yau, was also partly due to the consideration and choice of Representative Kingsley Chinda of Obio/Akpor Federal Constituency in Rivers State as Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, it was further learnt.
There are a total of four Minority positions in each of the two chambers of the National Assembly.
The decision would be communicated to the President of the Senate Ahmad Lawan who would formally announce same to all Senators upon the resumption of the upper legislative chamber on July 2 ,2019.
The Senate PDP Caucus had at a closed door meeting with the PDP NWC in Abuja, a fortnight ago resolved to pick Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP, Abia) as the Senate Minority Leader while Emmanuel Bwacha (PDP, Taraba) was nominated as his deputy.
At the same meeting, Philip Aduda (PDP, FCT) was picked as Minority Whip.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja
