Failure for the leadership of the ruling party, All Progressives Congress to step in quickly and pacify Senator Abdulazeez Yari’s loyalists in the Senate, the party may loose majority status to the leading opposition, the Peoples Democratic Party in the red chamber.
According to a report in the
Sunday Sun, 22 APC senators have perfected plan to dump the party and defect to the PDP.
The newspaper, quoting a reliable Senator from the Northwest, reported that these APC senators have decided to join force with their colleagues who are loyal to Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari who contested the Senate President position, but lost to Senator Godswill Akpabio.
Series of meetings to perfect this plan were said to have been held in Abuja and London.
Out of the 109 legislators in the upper legislative chamber, the APC currently has 59 senators; PDP, 36; LP, 8; SDP, 2; NNPP, 2; YPP, 1; and APGA, 1.
Therefore, if the 22 APC senators make good their threat, they will swell the number of the PDP to 58 while reducing that of APC to 37, thereby throwing up the PDP as the majority party in the Senate.
To actualize their plan, Sunday Sun gathered that the PDP senators have agreed to cede the Senate President position currently held by Senator Akpabio to one of the 22 senators and Yari’s allies decamping to the party, as well as the Deputy Senate President post.
On the part of the PDP senators, the party would take the Majority Leader, Chief Whip, and Deputy Chief Whip, the source said, adding that the Yari group has pledged to work harmoniously with them.
It would be recalled that Senator Akpabio used 17 votes to defeat Senator Yari during the 10th Senate President election held on June 13, with Akpabio scoring 63 votes and Yari, 46.
It was also gathered that the 22 senators who come from across the six-geopolitical zones and those planning to go to court from across party lines are just waiting to see how the sharing of principal offices, committees chairmanship positions in the Senate and some of their court cases in the states would go before carrying out their plans.
More worrisome to the Senators who are Yari’s loyalists was their exclusion from the ongoing committee selections in the Senate, which has reinforced their resolve to support the PDP in taking over the leadership of the upper chamber.
