23rd June, 2022
22 Senators who are members of the All Progressives Congress have concluded plans to decamp to other parties putting the ruling party’s majority under serious threat.
PM News learned that the senators are angry about losing their return tickets to the National Assembly during the APC primaries.
13 senators had earlier defected to the opposition parties, bringing the number of APC senators to 67.
With others capitalizing on the defections, PDP now has 39 senators and expecting more before the end of the month.
However, the APC is trying to control the situation.
The National Chairman of the ruling party Abdullahi Adamu met with the President of the Senate, Ahmed Lawan, who also lost his ticket, on Wednesday.
Adamu held a brief meeting with Lawan and then went into another general meeting with APC senators.
Speaking to journalists after his meeting, Adamu admitted that he was worried but he believes the issue is surmountable.
He said, “The meeting with the senators was most fruitful. The issue of defection is an unfortunate development when it happens but this is a season where there are all sorts of behavior in the political space and ours is not an exception.
“In every election year, this kind of thing gives cause for stakeholders to sneeze and Nigeria is not an exception so is the APC, not an exception. I don’t care about what is happening in other parties, my focus is on the APC. But we all know that the occurrence is not only happening in the APC, it’s happening across other political parties too. And because we are the ruling party, our problems are exaggerated before the public.”
He added, “There is no responsible leader that would not be worried when he loses one member not to talk of two. At the moment we are faced with the stark reality of our problems. I have committed my colleagues at the National Assembly to face the problem squarely and see the problem as solvable. We are in politics, I don’t know what would happen tomorrow, and nobody does.”
Meanwhile, a lawmaker who spoke to one of our correspondents on the condition of anonymity, said the meeting with Adamu would not yield any results if APC fails to play in the interest of the aggrieved senators.
The source noted that the meeting became necessary after the party learned that about 22 senators were ready to decamp.
He noted that Adamu listened to all the complaints of the senators and told them to put in writings.
The lawmaker also stated that Adamu promised that the party would look into the issues raised and do something about them.
The source said, “The chairman listened to everyone and promised that the leadership of the party will find solutions but he noted that whoever is not comfortable with the conclusion reached by the party will be allowed to leave.”