APC Has Rejected Saraki and Dogara’s Emergence

The All Progressives Congress has kicked against the emergence of Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara as the President of the Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives, respectively.

Saraki, a former Kwara State governor emerged unopposed shortly after the Clerk of the National Assembly, Salisu Maikasuwa, proclaimed the eighth Senate into existence.

Senator Ike Ekweremadu of PDP trounced Ali Ndume of the ruling APC to become Saraki’s deputy.

Dogara defeated the ex-Minority Leader of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, in a keenly contested poll.

But the victory of two men has been described as unacceptable by the APC.

The party in a statement by its Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, said that the actions of the new National Assembly leaders and their supporters amounted to treachery and disloyalty.

According to the APC, the inauguration and the process which led to the emergence of Saraki and Dogara on Tuesday represented the highest level of indiscipline.

The party therefore threatened to sanction the two men and their supporters in order to clearly show what it called its determination “to enforce party discipline and supremacy.”

The statement read in part, “Senator Saraki and Dogara are not the candidates of the APC and a majority of its National Assembly members-elect for the positions of Senate President and House Speaker.

“The party duly met and conducted a straw poll and clear candidates emerged for the posts of Senate President, the Deputy Senate President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, supported by a majority of all Senators-elect and members-elect of the House of Representatives.

“All National Assembly members-elect who emerged on the platform of the party are bound by that decision. The party is supreme and its interest is superior to that of its individual members.”

The party decried what it described as a situation in which some people, based on nothing but “inordinate ambition and lack of discipline and loyalty, will enter into an unholy alliance with the very same people whom the party and indeed the entire country worked hard to replace and sell out the hard won victory of the party.”