50 Nigerian senators yesterday met in the nation’s capital, Abuja, over
the recent ordeal of the senate president, Bukola Saraki.
The
emergency meeting, chaired by the Deputy Senate Leader, Bala Ibn Na’Allah,
accused a cabal in the presidency of instigating the government institutions
against Saraki.
According to
Daily Trust, the senators who attended the emergency meeting held in a
private office near a popular supermarket in Abuja, cut across party lines.
The meeting
reportedly started at 11.00am and ended at 3.00pm while some senators who were
said to be abroad joined the meeting via telephone. Saraki was however not
present at the meeting.
One of the
senators who was part of the meeting but spoke under the condition of
anonymity, said they initially thought President Muhammadu Buhari was
behind Saraki’s ordeal, but after exhaustive deliberations they had a second
thought on the issue.
He said: “Our
colleagues were angry at the beginning of the meeting because they were
initially suspecting that the President has hand in the trial of Saraki. But
after heated debate, they understood that Buhari was not responsible for it.
“One
of our colleagues present at the meeting suggested that the Senate should
reconvene on Monday [tomorrow] in order to address the challenge. His
suggestion, however, did not see the light of day as we resolved to use other
channels to address the challenge.”
Recall that the
code of conduct tribunal issued a bench warrant against Saraki last week
for failing to appear before the tribunal in a trial brought against
Even as
Saraki berated the tribunal for ignoring the subsisting order of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja issued on
September 18, which halted his invitation to the tribunal.
Saraki had earlier described the 13 count corruption
charge against him by the tribunal as frivolous. He went ahead to say that
he declared his assets in 2007, 2011, and
recently in 2015, and the tribunal never wrote to complain of any
inconsistencies.
No comments:
Post a Comment