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Ekweremadu Will Create Problems For Buhari – Kwankwaso

Published

10 years ago

June 16, 2015

Immediate past governor of Kano State Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso yesterday said election of a deputy senate president from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will create problems for the Muhammadu Buhari- led All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.
He advised the APC national chairman to write a letter of reprimand to Saraki and the other senators who are members of the party in order to ensure party discipline.
Kwankwaso, who was elected into the 8th Senate said while speaking with newsmen in Abuja that the circumstances under which the current senate leadership was put in place is worse than the circumstances that led to the emergence of Aminu Waziri Tambuwal as speaker of the House of Representatives in 2011. He noted that is has sown seeds of discord for the ruling party and the current administration.
“In 2011 the Tambuwal case was a case of going out of the zoning but all the positions went to the members of the party while this time around, because of the ambition of members of our party they went and connived with people who are not only opponents but enemies of the party to fight the party after the people of this country have discarded these people,” he said.
The former governor said the APC should do all it could to reclaim its mandate, saying the position of the deputy senate president rightly belongs to the ruling party and recalled that for the five times the PDP controlled the government at the centre, it did not share the leadership positions in the National Assembly with any other party.
He said it was wrong for the Saraki group to have gone to the extent of negotiating away the seat of the deputy senate president to a member of the opposition party.
“I think the party unfortunately is divided but it is not too late to correct things. The party should take certain steps to ensure such things don’t happen again in the party.
“Bukola should not go too far on his ambition. At his level people should be more careful about what they do. Members of the party should have limitations, they should know where to start and where to stop. I think this is going too far romancing members of the PDP,” he said.
“As far as we are concerned, PDP was dead until recently when ambition brought certain people to do what they should not do in party politics now they are creating unnecessary line for them and some of them are surfacing again making all sorts of statements,” he added.
Kwankwaso identified several factors as responsible for what transpired at the National Assembly on the June 9, saying the delay on the part of the APC in taking a position on the issue of zoning, as well the insistence by the Group of Seven (G-7) governors that left the PDP for compensation as another.
He said some of the senators felt that supporting Lawan would be supporting Bola Tinubu believed to have had his fair share in the current administration.
“On the issue of what went wrong. So many things had to do with time. I know very well that you are aware that we had so many weeks and months after the elections and that was the time when action would have been taken to ensure we had a successful election. This is not the time to say I told you. But many of us tried to draw the attention of our leaders to do the right thing at the right time. Sometimes you may decide to do the right thing at the wrong time and this may back fire.
“I think the party lost crucial opportunity to resolve the issue because many people who were involved were facing these challenges for the first time.
“What complicated the whole matter is that the situation now is that more than 50 percent of Bukola is in PDP. If you take the position of the senate president it becomes more difficult. The implication is that very soon the leadership of the senate will start Tambuwalising the party and of course the government as we have seen in 2011,” he stated.