The real story behind the election that put Bukola Saraki in power is slowly coming out. Senators, who served in the 7th Senate, have disowned the 2015 edition of the Senate Standing Orders as amended.

The senators who are from different political parties, on Saturday said they were not aware of any amendments to the 2011 Senate Standing Orders stating that the forged orders were said to have been used in the election of Ekweremadu and Saraki.

A petition by Senator Sulaiman Hunkuyi (All Progressives Congress, Kaduna State), wrote a petition to the police, which led to the interrogation of deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu.

The petition alleged that some parts of the 2015 Senate Orders were different from the one ratified by the 6th Senate in 2010, which was used by the 7th Senate as Standing Orders 2011.

A few senators of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) claimed that they were not acquainted with any amendments to the standing rule.

PDP Senator representing Plateau South,  Victor Lar said as as when they left the senate, there were no alterations to the Senate Standing Orders.

“The Senate did set up a committee to amend the provisions of the Standing Rules of 1999, that amendment was adopted and so the Senate rules as at 2003, 2007, and 2011 have been the same,” he said.

Also, a former high ranking member of the PDP in the Senate, who spoke on condition of anonymity revealed that the controversy over whether or not the rules were altered was unnecessary adding that the bureaucracy of the National Assembly is in the best position to explain what happened if at all there was any infraction.

“Usually, at the beginning of any new session, you are given a copy of the Rule Book (Senate Standing Orders) which is printed by the management. If any change needs to be done, senators agree on it. I will give you an example, we used to have a rule called rule 101 that was introduced towards the end of the 5th Senate but when we came back in the 6th Senate, we realised that that rule ran contrary to Section 64 even though we had approved it at plenary, in another plenary we agreed to remove it,” he said.

However, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Rules and Business in 7th Senate, Ita Enang, also explained that the Standing Orders that should have been used for the inauguration of the 8th Senate is the Standing Orders that was used and closed within the 7th Senate thereby indicating that something fishy happened during the inauguration.

“I made proposal for amendments between 2011 and 2015, I laid the report on the floor, but we did not consider the report. We did not amend the Standing Orders.

“Before we left, I had approved the reprinting of the Standing Orders and the reprinting did not include inserting anything which was not in the old one. Reprinting is, simply reproduce what we have because there are no more copies,” he said.

Also commenting on the development, Babafemi Ojudu (APC), who represented Ekiti Central in the 7th Senate, said, there was no amendment and that even Enang who is the custodian of the rules expressed shock when asked about any amendment made.

“Any amendments done to the Senate Rules which we used in the 7th Senate is criminal and perpetrators should be charged for forgery.”

However, APC Senator representing Zamfara central, Kabir Marafa, alleged that order 3 (2) (iv) had been added into the new rule book which now made it compulsory to spread committee members and chairmanship across the six geopolitical zones.

Marafa, who is a member of the 7th Senate and had been reelected into the 8th Senate alleged that the document used to inaugurate Saraki, Ekweremadu was forged.

Giving a breakdown, he explained that a careful study of both the old and new standing rule at its disposal, showed that the insertion of order 3 ( 3e i – iiii ) was done deliberately to accommodate a member of the opposition party as deputy senate president.

“The problem is that the senate was inaugurated using a forged document. Who forged that document? We can’t gloss over or sweep that criminality under the carpet, Nigeria is not a Banana Republic!”

“The insertion of order 3 (2 iv) & 3 (3e i-iiii) in the 2015 edition is a deliberate act perpetrated by fifth columnists operating within the National Assembly to sabotage the government of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“It was done to cause friction, disaffection and generate bad blood among senators from different zones and provoke confusion in the senate with the sole aim of stagnating government business to give them time to perfect their agenda,” he said.

“For 16 years of PDP leadership, the presiding officers and committee headship was skewed in favour of the zones that produce more PDP senators but suddenly they introduce equality of zones in the distribution of these offices because they lost out, this is unacceptable by APC senators,” he added.

Another senator from the South-West geopolitical zone also said there was no time that the 7th Senate made such amendments.

The senator also described the new 2015 Senate Standing Order as a forgery and called for the immediate prosecution of the perpetrators.

“We did not change anything in the rules used for the 7th Senate. The procedure for such amendments are clearly stated even in the rule itself and none of the process took place throughout the life time of the 7th Senate.

“Even in the proposed amendment, we did not include the issue of secret ballot system. Who inserted it? When the ballot box did become a matter of the chamber?

“The only thing we inserted in the proposed one was to insert the Committee on MDG. There was the Committee on Commerce and Industry, the Senate President abolished it and created Committee on Investment. There was a dispute between Senators Nenadi Usman and Odion Ugbesia, so we created the committee on investment and deleted the committee on trade and industry.

“We then assigned more functions to the Committee on Special Duties. Apart from these amendments, we didn’t touch any other aspect. The resistance of Senator David Mark to approve the aspect which would assign specific productive functions to the deputy senate president delayed deliberation on the proposed amendments,” he said.