The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Lai Mohammed says the party
is currently in a dilemma in regards to carrying out its planned sanction on their
party members, Senator Bukola Saraki and Hon Yakubu Dogara for
presenting themselves for elections at the
National Assembly against the party's wish.
While speaking on Channels TV this morning, Lai Mohammed said there have
been reservations expressed by some people that the party might lose its
majority in the house to the PDP if they do not manage the situation properly
"Yes people have expressed that concern but how do
you maintain cohesion and discipline in the country and the same time
ensure that you continue to maintain the majority in the house. Now what
happens if this goes unpunished and unquestioned, then anybody in the
party can do what they like. So this is the dilemma the party is facing.
The dilemma within the party is how on one hand we ensure cohesion and
discipline within the party and the same time ensure that the matter
does not deteriorate. The real danger the party faces now is having the
leadership of the national assembly which you cannot call your own. The
leadership of the national assembly that does not share your agenda. The
leadership that does no share your vision. If you understand how the
National Assembly works and the kind of power the leadership has, you
will understand the danger of what happened yesterday. For instance
today, we can no longer talk about having leadership caucus in the
National Assembly today because the leadership is made up of both the
PDP and the APC. So there is nothing personal to APC that can be
discussed in confidence without the PDP knowing. It means if a letter
goes to the President to the Senate, it means it will go to the
leadership of the PDP, APC, everybody even before our own members read
it. It is quite a serious issue"he said.
He said he cannot pinpoint any mistake his party made that led them to this current situation.
Asked
if the party can afford to suspend Saraki and Dogara, he said "The
party can afford to do anything to maintain discipline"
He explained why the party described the actions of Saraki and Dogara as treachery
"Well
you see when we were campaigning, we campaigned against the PDP because
we believed that the PDP after 16 years did not live up to the
expectations of Nigerians. Now if any of our members now want to be
Senate President or Speaker and he is going to rely on the same
opposition that was displaced and in total defiance to the party's
directives, its Treachery. If 57 people voted to elect senate president,
that speaks volumes. That means there are only 8 senators from the APC
that joined the 49 Senators from the PDP. If Femi scored 174 votes, that
means out of the 209 members of the APC in the house of Reps, only 30
moved over. So clearly, what happened yesterday was rebellion by a very
small minority of the members elect, that is why we call it treachery"he
said
On why the meeting
with President Buhari and members of the APC which was supposed to
resolve all issues between party members before the National Assembly
leadership election did not hold as expected at the International
Conference Center Abuja yesterday June 9th, he said
"The
meeting did not hold for two reasons. One, those members of the party
that were bent on disobeying the party directives did not turn up and
while the President was preparing to come to attend the meeting with all
other faithful, loyal members of the party, he was informed they had
already started voting in the upper chambers and at that point in time
there was no point for him to come to join the meeting. That is why we
now asked our members to go back to the National assembly while we went
to the presidency"he said
