The Comrade Adams Oshiomhole led National Working Committee NWC of the All Progressives Congress APC Tuesday met with the party caucus in the National Assembly to evolve strategies towards reconvening the two chambers of the legislature.
However, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara was conspicuously absent from the meeting.
Declaring the meeting open, Oshiomhole declared that the Senate President, Bukola Saraki would be impeached and asked him to remain where he is, that is the Peoples Democratic Party PDP saying he should not contemplate coming back to the ruling party.
“As governing party, I want to reassure the Nigerian people that we are committed to leading by example and that means absolute submission and obedience to the letters and spirit of the Nigerian Constitution and everything we will do, we will ensure that it is done according to law including the impeachment of Sen. Bukola Saraki. There is no hiding place for him. I insist, his time is up. The only way that probably, he could have retained that seat is to decide to return but we will not be ready to welcome him. He must remain where he is and we will continue to ensure that he surrenders the presidency of the senate to the majority party in the senate in line with the provisions of our constitution”, he said.
Oshiomhole also added that the APC has a clear majority in the senate with 56 senators, stating that the party cannot therefore allow itself to be subjected to the rule of the minority as exemplified by Saraki’s leadership of the upper chamber.
“I believe we now have 56 APC senators. That is more than half. That is a simple majority. I am made to understand that we have 109 senators. We have 56 out of 109. But we also know for a fact that as we speak, one of the APC senators is in prison for reasons which is not hidden from any Nigerian. So, if the senate resumes today, we have 56 of 108 senators and so there is no question of who is in charge.
“In the House of Representatives, there is no question that we have the overwhelming majority. Out of a total number of 360, we have 196 members of the House of Representatives including the very best, the brightest, the most rugged, the most committed members of the House.
“The Governors are not here, but we still have 22 solid Govs out of 36 and even the Mayor of Abuja is on our platform, the Honourable Minister of the FCT.
I want to speak to two issues. It is now clear that those who attempted political suicides are now haunted by their own ghosts. Even if it is their shadow that is chasing them, they will say it is the APC.
“Democracy teaches us that minority has the right to have their say but majority must have their way. So, if we have 56 senators and they have 49 senators, I insist that 49 senators cannot preside over the affairs of a house in which APC has 56 senators. And I ask them to tell us anywhere in the world where minority rules over majority.
“Often times, we take flights to Washington and other places to understudy the American Presidential system of government. Once you lose majority, without further ado, you step down and over and all of these stories about illegal impeachment, let me restate that we cannot be subjected to minority rule in the Nigerian senate and therefore, whether it is convenient for Distinguished Sen. Saraki or not, the truth is whether by morality or by law or by convention, Sen. Saraki can only avoid impeachment by toeing the path of honour, step down so that APC can take over the leadership of the House.
“So, I want to repeat, Sen. Saraki as President of the Senate will be lawfully and democratically impeached. It will not be illegally done. It will be done according to law and tradition. Those lawyers who have chosen to sit as judges, we need to remind them that lawyers are at best, officers of the court; they do not constitute the court. So, when Sen. Saraki is lawfully and democratically impeached, they will be free to go to anywhere they want to go and canvass the legality or the illegality of the action. It is not in their place to pronounce with finality as if they constitute the judicial arm of government.
“I am also happy that just recently, when our party went to court to challenge the bill that was under consideration in the National Assembly with regards to order of elections where the court held that based on the principles of separation of powers, that the court cannot stop the legislature from exercising their independence. But when they have so exercised their independence and make a law or a decision, now the legality of that decision as it relates to the constitution can be challenged in the court. So, all those who are wasting their time believing that they can go and file spurious cases in various types of courts so that they can in turn wrongly hang on it to purport that the matter is in court and therefore the senate cannot exercise their fundamental right to determine their leadership, they need to read carefully that judgment by the Court of Appeal. This morning I saw some people saying they are going to court to stop the senate president from being impeached. That will be an exercise in futility because the court cannot impose on the senate who leads them. It is at the discretion of the senate to determine who rules them.
“We have very many important issues which require the National Assembly to deliberate on. Those issues that were pending when the two presiding officers hurriedly adjourned the deliberations of the House without exhausting the calendar. The result is that we have serious pending issues that require deliberations by the National Assembly including the issue of the approval of foreign loans without which this year’s budget cannot perform; the issue of the INEC budget and virement of the budget. Ours is to appeal to all of you that your commitment to the sustenance of democracy is enough to get you to do all that you can to get the National Assembly to reconvene so that these and other weighty national issues will be deliberated upon, appropriate decisions reached so that the Nigerian government is not shut down. If we do not take those steps and government cannot spend money that should be appropriated, we run the risk of government shutdown. As members of the governing party, I believe you will do whatever is needed to be done to prevent a government shutdown.
“I want to reassure you that we value you; all the stories about people being denied or that you would be frustrated out, I want to assure you that our party values experience; our party values knowledge; our party values loyalty and our party will do everything possible to reward loyalty and demonstrate that loyalty pays and we will not be ashamed to do so. We are already doing so many things on our part but like they say, the taste of the pudding is in the eating. With time, all these shall come to pass and we would have kept our word as you have kept yours.
“Let me assure all of us that the National Working Committee is making this promise publicly and we are doing you no favour. Legislation and the legislature requires experience because nobody can give what he does not have. We see people like Senator McCain, when they speak, American people listen. High turn over of legislators is not a value to be celebrated. What we should celebrate is experience which cannot be read in books, but can be acquired on the job. I want to reassure you that we will do everything possible to change the old narrative of heavy turn over every four years and this will change over time for the good of Nigeria and for the maintenance of democracy.”
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