Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, on Tuesday said that some All Progressives Congress (APC) members in the Senate and House of Representatives were planning to decamp to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
According to him, some of the lawmakers now regret pitching their tents with the ruling party in the last elections.
Ekweremadu spoke when the PDP Board of Trustees paid a solidarity visit to the PDP Senate Caucus at the National Assembly Complex.
His words:
“Today, I believe and I am speaking the minds of my colleagues, that so many members of the National Assembly from the other parties are prepared to return to the PDP because they have seen that they made a mistake in the last election by voting APC and they are also seeing that PDP remains the biggest, greatest and the most focused party in Nigeria.”
Chairman of the PDP BoT, Senator Walid Jibril, who led the delegation condemned Ekweremadu’s ongoing trial over alleged forgery of Senate Rules describing it as a frame-up and a deliberate plot to tarnish his person.
Jibril, noted that as fathers and conscience of the party, the BOT could not sit and watch the framing-up of the Deputy President of the Senate on trumped-up charges of forgery, apparently for political reasons.
His words: “We are here to show solidarity and recognise the leadership of Senator Ekweremadu, especially when we hear stories of what is happening to him. We are here to give our total support to him over the recent framing of him in an alleged forgery case, because we cannot, as fathers and conscience of the party, sit down and just watch.”
“Senator Ekweremadu is a man of integrity with a high record of performance. We want to advise strongly that nobody should try to tarnish his personality and we are strongly calling for fair hearing and justice in the attempt to rope-in Senator Ekweremadu for political reasons.
“He was elected Deputy President of Senate by 48 PDP senators with the support of APC Senators, which is a good ingredient of our democracy. No attempt should be made to rope him in. He should be left alone to continue the good service to the country”.
Another ranking member of the BoT and former President of the Senate, Adolphus Wabara, noted that the era of executive interference in legislative business, was over given the spirit of support among Senators.
He said:
“I speak as a victim of executive interference in the legislature. During our own time, there was not the kind of unity being exhibited by the Senators today. I want to commend and salute you all for that. The last time the two Presiding Officers went to court, as I watched on television, I was moved to tears. The court was on vacation, and no one had the courtesy of informing them before hand. “The time they would have used to attend to the nation’s task, was wasted, going to court. It is high time the executive realizes that the era of executive interference was over”
