The Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has said that calls demanding his resignation are unnecessary and baseless as he was duly elected and has no desire to forfeit given to him by his colleagues.
Ekweremadu was reacting to the insistence of the All Progressives Congress that he should be removed.
Speaking through his media aide, Mr. Ismail Omipidan, Ekweremadu said politics is level playing field and the APC should stop playing to the gallery.
He recalled that when former speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal defected from the PDP to the APC he retained his speakership. A position he said the APC had no problem accommodating.
He said, “The call for Ekweremadu’s resignation also exposes the hypocrisy of some APC stalwarts. You will recall that when Tambuwal defected (from the PDP) to the APC, all the notable leaders of the party, including Lai Mohammed who was the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, stated clearly that there was nowhere in the constitution where it was stated that the Speaker (of the House of Representatives) must be produced by the majority party; that was their argument. (The current Majority Leader of the House) Femi Gbajabiamila also said so.
“What has now changed? The constitution has not been rewritten; it is the same constitution. And it is very clear that ‘the senators shall elect the Senate President and the Deputy Senate President from amongst themselves.’”
Omipidan also stated that the APC produced the speakers of the Benue and Plateau state House of Assemblies despite being the minority.
He went ahead to recall that during the first tenure of Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State, the ruling APC produced the speaker of the House of Assembly while an opposition party produced the deputy speaker.
“Where you don’t have a clear majority, there has to be some alliances to make the legislative work go smoothly. These things happened in the states but they never raised eyebrows then,” he added.
It is believed that any plot to unseat Ekweremadu will fail as the APC caucus remains divided.
Dolapo is a writer and journalist who works with YNaija. He has interests in Christianity, politics and sports.
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