Defection: One million ‘Oshiomholes’ cannot remove me from office – Saraki

…says calls for his resignation are wishful thinking

Senate President Bukola Saraki last night said that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole and other people demanding his resignation are merely dreaming and engaging in wishful thinking.

He vowed not to throw in the towel.

“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,” Saraki said in a swift response to Oshiomhole’s threat yesterday that the APC would get him impeached if he refused to resign.

Saraki in a statement signed by his spokesman, Yusuph Olaniyonu said: “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 resumes. 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.

“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 was 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 Representives 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.

“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 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.

“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.

“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.

“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.”

Saraki said “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.”