Adams Oshiomhole, All Progressives Congress (APC) national chairman and Bukola Saraki, president of the Senate, are waging a fierce war of words over the unsettled dust of defections sweeping across the Nigerian political firmament.
The two Nigeria’s political gladiators have been engaged in accusations and political verbal battle with each, describing themselves in lewd terms.
Oshiomhole, while addressing a press conference at the APC National Secretariat Abuja, accused Saraki of political sabotage against APC, the party that catapulted him to the exalted position of the Senate President.
He asked Saraki to tow the path of honour and resign his position or face impeachment based on moral, democratic and legal ethos.
The APC National Chairman, who compared the recent defection of the Senate Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio from People’s Democratic Party, (PDP) to APC in which he wrote to inform the PDP even before his defection that he was resigning said, “Senator Saraki has demonstrated neither character nor being a man of honour.”
“I told him when we held a meeting that he came to join the APC as a Senator and it is on our platform that you became Senate President. Once you made up your mind to leave, the honourable thing to do is to resign as Senate President.
“If he does not resign, he will be impeached according to law and not by thuggery or by mob or anything undemocratic. He cannot sustain a minority rule in the Senate and that is what is haunting him in the Senate.
“When I say that the Senate President will be impeached, let me emphasise that he will be impeached properly according to law. The constitution is clear how a presiding officer can be impeached and because several impeachments have taken place, we are not about to witness what has not taken place before,” he said.
According to Oshiomhole, “We have enough precedent to fall back on. I have looked at the constitution which does not say that an impeachment is illegal. It is done; you cannot arrive at the conclusion that it is unlawful. How can we be accused of planning an illegal impeachment when it has not commenced.
“If he thinks that by saying that he will pre-empt the APC from having him impeached, he is deceiving himself. I think that the time of Saraki is over. The way he has manipulated the politics of Kwara State, he fails to understand that the Nigerian project is far more complicated than being at the mercy of his own dynasty.”
The former Edo State governor boasted that Saraki, would not only be impeached but APC would work hard to have him defeated as a Senator in his own Senatorial zone come 2019 by the people of Kwara State who are fed up with him.
Oshiomhole said: “Go and check the results of the elections that made him a Senator and you will find out that the President got more votes from Kwara Central than Saraki got for himself. So, he can’t claim that the vote the APC got from his Senatorial zone was because of him.
“That is why his leaving is of no political consequences as far as electoral issues are concerned. We tried to talk to him, not out of fear, but out of conviction that as a presiding officer, there are rules of engagement.”
While dismissing the alleged impeachment plot against Saraki during the last Tuesday siege on the National Assembly, Oshiomhole said: “There is the futile attempt he has made to suggest that the Tuesday’s incidence was an attempt to carry out an illegal impeachment”.
“How can a presiding officer arrive at such a conclusion that there was a plan to carry out an illegal impeachment? Until an action takes place, you cannot determine the outcome, if impeachment itself is unlawful, then you can understand where he is coming from.
“It is lawful to impeach anyone, including the President, the Senate and his deputy if the number required to do so is present. So, he cannot pre-empt that. From their own statement, they claimed to be aware that the Senate President was going to be illegally impeached and so mobilised thugs to the Senate,” he further said.
The APC national chairman also said: “They told the world that they have adjourned till 25th September. But meanwhile, about 15 PDP Senators were in the Senate and imported thugs that molested two of our members they saw in the Senate. If APC senators were not in the Senate and it was PDP senators that were there, what is the basis of the false claim that there was an attempt to carry out an illegal impeachment?
“In any case, Saraki is not going to be the first Senate President to be impeached and I doubt if he is going to be the last. But definitely, he will be impeached according to law and democratic norms. The only way he can avoid impeachment is for him to do what is honourable.”
Apparently not allowing Oshiomhole to think he has a superior argument on the issue of impeachment, Bukola Saraki, through his aide, decided to chip in some words, pointedly telling the former labour leader that his proposition amounted to “wishful thinking”.
“It is rather surprising that Mr. Adams Oshiomhole is behaving like a rain-beaten chicken, crying all over the place as if the Senate President is the apparition haunting his life and the sinking ship that he captains,” a statement authored and signed by by Yusuph Olaniyonu, special adviser on Media and Publicity to the Senate President, said.
It further said: “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.
“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.”
The Senate President’s aide further said: “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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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 exercise in futility.”
James Kwen, Abuja
