Why northern APC senators voted Saraki
…The ACN factor that upset APC nomination

A ranking senator yesterday revealed how his Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) colleagues and those of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) who supported the
emergence of Senator Bukola Saraki as the Senate
President were threatened the week preceding the
inauguration of the National Assembly.
He also revealed how senators-elect in APC from the North
backed out of the Ahmed Lawan-for-Senate President
project when they learnt that the intention was to cage
President Muhammadu Buhari as plotted by some Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN) elements in APC, who
nominated the vice president.
The senator from the South-East, who doesn’t want to be
named, told Daily Sun that elements who wanted Senator
Lawan to emerge as Senate President, essentially from the
ACN bloc of the APC did everything possible to ensure they
arm-twisted the senators sympathetic to Saraki.
He stated: “Sometime last week, it got so bad that their
men stormed the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, where most of
us stayed and had our meeting to attack members. The
attack came as the last effort after we resisted their
inducement.
“Yes, we were all approached to vote the people they
wanted in the two chambers of the National Assembly, but
we said no. We resisted them because we were on a
mission to salvage our party, and we were bent on voting
the person that would serve our interest. Now PDP is in
the opposition and we have to teach APC a lesson in
positive opposition.”
He revealed that if the PDP National Assembly plot had
been carried through to conclusion, there are indications
that the APC would also have suffered another bad outing
in the House of Representatives.
Prior to the elections, there were plans already kept ready
for the House of Representatives to also elect a PDP
member as the deputy speaker from the South-South.
Daily Sun gathered that the PDP caucus had got into a pact
with the Yakubu Dogara camp for Hon. Leo Ogor, a PDP
member from Delta State, to be the deputy speaker. But
shortly after the election that returned Hon. Dogara as
Speaker, the defeated contestant, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila,
acted fast and approached the new Speaker and pleaded
with him that the South-West, with much membership of
the House on the APC platform should not be left empty-
handed. This point sounded valid to Dogara who
immediately approached Ogor for his understanding, and
the latter was said to have conceded, stating that if
dropping his interest would foster smooth working in the
House, he would not mind.
The senator also noted that after they defied several
efforts to woo them over, “the same people that had been
persuading us resorted to force and had to get security
agents to intimidate us and make us yield. It was at that
point that we all vacated our suites in Hilton and relocated
to the Sandralia Hotel in Abuja to conclude our plans and
held to the decision we had taken.”
The lawmaker said although they had facts of the plot as
coming from the ACN arm of the APC, “it was the mild
drama where some senators walked out of the chamber
while in session on Wednesday, a day after the
inauguration, that we got the message very clear. As those
senators filed out of the chambers, we all noticed that the
northern APC members who were among them, from the
beginning, remained in chamber. All those that walked out
were South-West APC senators.”
However, from what he said, the other major factor that
turned the table in favour Saraki was the notion that the
plot to ensure that Lawan emerged Senate President was
for the ACN bloc to cage Buhari.
“There is this feeling that the ACN bloc had already taken
the vice president’s slot, and allowing them determine who
manages the National Assembly was like simply taking too
much and making sure they manipulate the President with
their men around the number one man. That is not
politically sound and when the northern senators of the
APC were aware of that plot, they had to beat a retreat and
align with Saraki.
Also, people who are very close to the President must
have revealed to him why the agitation over the National
Assembly leadership as targeting him, reason he changed
his mind about attending the party’s caucus meeting in
the morning, prior to the election of the National Assembly
leaders, he explained.
From the disclosure of the senator, the development in the
APC over the outcome of the selection of the National
Assembly leadership might have caused an early and
major crack in the party.
The fear, according to watchers, is that the party might
experience early crack that might lead to a split along the
lines of the blocs from which the ruling party was formed.
Source:
sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=122961

Everybody seems to have their own angle to the story, keep them coming

Indeed everyone has different angle but the angle that I can assure you of is that some of the Senators will be busy now lobbying to get committee appointment in the Senate while people are on Nairaland trading personal, ethnic and so-called political insults.