IN WHOSE INTEREST IS A DESTABILIZED NIGERIAN SENATE? ~ By Law Mefor

The issue is the fear of the X factor, which Senator Ike Ekweremadu seems to represent. He is a man who has defied many improbable odds and emerged stronger and still waxing. His return to the 8th Senate against all predictions, and more surprisingly, emerging as deputy senate president caught the bookmakers napping. His political future is so bright that his detractors are now more apprehensive than ever before. He operates like a man whose destiny is ironed to a future, which the gods themselves appear to be covetously guarding and guiding.

A careful examination of what is afoot at the moment may equally reveal 2019 Presidential Election permutations and fear of those who believe that the Ekweremadu factor will play a great role in it and has to be dealt with now or never. So, a nefarious plot to achieve this dastardly political objective is not implausible at all more so given the antecedents of the actors who have been plotting his removal from office all the while. I shall return to the 2019 Presidential angle later.

First, let us rehash a bit of the alarm that the Deputy Senate President. Sen Ike Ekweremaduu, raised few days ago, over alleged plans by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC to storm his house and plant huge amounts of money to implicate him. Ekweremadu who came under point of Order, Order 43 of the Senate Standing Rules to alert his colleagues, said that the money the EFCC intends to plant, when the anti- graft agency storms his house or a guest house linked to him on Saturday, May 6th, 2017, flaunting the whistle-blowing policy, would include British pound stilling, US dollars, Indian Rupee, South Africa rand and Malaysian Ringgit.

The EFCC has since responded and called the alarm false. But can it really be? Knowing Ekweremadu, is he the kind of man that would waste the senate’s time and that of the nation by engaging in such expensive frivolity? Most unlikely. Could the message he said he got from a concerned investigative journalist also be a hoax? Even if it is a hoax, how could Ekweremadu have deciphered that it is, in the face of the many plots to see him out of office?

There are reasons for Ekweremadu to take such information seriously. It is not just a case of witch crying in the night and baby dying in the morning; or Ekweremadu merely trying to err on the side of caution by wolfing. The plots to remove Ekweremadu as deputy senate president have never stopped. It is a long script that is being acted in phases and the present case may just be one of such desperate moves against the veteran politician and ace lawmaker, which all lovers of democracy and lovers of our country should join in resisting.

Given the plausibility of the alarm, attention should be focused on those who have always wanted Ekweremadu out at all costs. Since his emergence as deputy senate president, many ruling party’s chieftains have sworn that every arsenal would be deployed to retrieve the seat, which they say belongs to the APC, despite the 1999 Constitution stating that the lawmakers should elect from among themselves whoever they please.

Many instances of such resolve to remove Ekweremadu are quite handy. Recall the statement made by one of the jolted spokesmen of the APC shortly after Ekweremadu’s emergence that the party would stop at nothing until they retrieve what they proclaimed “stolen mandates “held by Saraki and Ekweremadu.

Saraki was accused of causing implosion in his Party (APC) by ignoring party directives and connived with the PDP senators to steal the Senate Presidency, an arrangement that led to the emergence of Senator Ekweremadu of PDP as the Deputy Senate President. So, evidently, APC does not want Bukola Saraki as the Senate President and neither does APC want Ekweremadu as the Deputy Senate President and has never hidden it.

Saraki was told by such chieftains of his party that if he feels his hands are tightly glued to the exalted seat of the Senate Presidency and therefore cannot be removed, that the party may be compelled to tear or cut his hands off. The same threats have constantly gone out for Sen Ike Ekweremadu as well.

Another APC chieftain also said that the removal of Ekweremadu was just a matter of time, confidently asserting that “there are many ways of killing a rat or cooking yam”. Soon after these open declarations of ‘war’ against the duo leading the senate by such APC chieftains, the contrived trial of Saraki commenced at the Code Conduct Tribunal (CCT) over claims of false asset declaration the same Tribunal glossed over for over 13 years. Soon after also, there came up yet another contrived trial over claims of forgery against Saraki and Ekweremadu, apparently as one such desperate attempts to rope in Ekweremadu anyhow, to say nothing of the strange vehicle that rammed into his convoy in Abuja late 2015.

So, if there is a message showing that some elements in the ruling deputy senate president APC, alongside some cabals in the presidency are plotting for the impeachment of Senator Ike Ekweremadu as Deputy Senate President, it should not be seen as so strange. In fact it will be rather strange to expect otherwise in the face of the numerous running battles.

Ekweremadu has been a nightmare to the ruling party all the while. Apart from the dexterous manner he emerged as deputy senate president, he is one politician who has navigated too many political minefields. The quietly achieving Ekweremadu has been seen as a cat with nine lives due to such improbable survivals and the APC senators at a point openly wooed him to join their fold on the floor of the senate, as a precondition for keeping his seat.

Though many PDP chieftains have done so, Ekweremadu is too principled to betray the PDP that made him and refused to decamp to the APC, despite the fact that the APC has become sort of a strong tower where the politically troubled have run into and are saved. Ekweremadu refused to take that cheap route despite the relief it readily offered him. It may be one of the reasons for the renewed efforts to oust him from office and destroy his political career.

Days ago too, there were high-wired politics that saw to the release of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) from detention, in which Ekweremadu was believed to have played a decisive role. Kanu was given what appeared to be impossible conditions by her lordship, Justice Binta Nyako of Abuja Federal High Court, who ordered that Kanu must produce a senator, a respectable Igbo leader and most usually, a Jewish leader, each of who should be able to forfeit N100m. These conditions were met and many believe that Ekweremadu pulled the strings from behind the scenes through the South East senate caucus and Igbo leaders. It is scaring his opponents.

So, the current plot may be stemming from the apprehension of some of the politicians who are scared stiff by the Ekweremadu factor and its likely decisive role in the event that President Muhammadu Buhari does not contest the 2019 Presidential Election on health grounds, and the PDP makes a dramatic recovery with a likely Supreme Court victory. Some of the calculations is that without Buhari, APC remains vulnerable and a PDP ticket that would pair Ekweremadu with a top northern figure can make the race for Aso Rock a 50-50, two-way horse race between the APC and the PDP, and the result can go either way if the election is to be free and fair.

But in playing this dirty card the plotters have ignored the immediate dire consequence, which is destroying the bipartisan relationship in the senate nay National Assembly, which Saraki and Ekweremadu have patriotically ensured. The APC does not enjoy any absolute majority in the senate and many of its members are sympathetic to both PDP and Ekweremadu.

If we recall, Ekweremadu won the office of the deputy senate president by over 50 votes, which showed that his support cut across party lines. If Ekweremadu and his party and adherents decide to fight back, the bipartisan relationship that has ensure a smooth sale for all government requests to the senate will die a natural death, leaving in its trail, rancor and frustration.

That is why I ask, in whose interest is a destabilized Nigerian senate?