The Amalgamated All Progressives Congress (APC) Support Groups say the contest for the president of the 10th Senate is a Constitutional matter, and Senators-elect must be allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to vote for leaders of their choice.
The group’s Director-General, Kailani Muhammad, said this on Wednesday, at a news conference in Abuja.
Muhammad, who is also the national chairman of the Tinubu/Shettima Network (TSN), described the endorsement of Godswill Akpabio for Senate president as a rumour.
He said, “The rumours going around of endorsement is indeed a total distraction from the tenets of democracy, and must be discarded by all and sundry. We must allow the free will of choice by the senators-elect to flourish”, adding that, “The senators-elect must be allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to vote for aspirants of their choice at the Senate chamber because democracy demands it”.
The APC leadership had reportedly reached a resolution on the two key offices in the National Assembly following a meeting of the NWC on Monday at the National Secretariat of the Party in Abuja.
A cross-section of senators-elect from various political parties also rejected external influence in the election of their presiding officers. At the induction programme organised for them by the National Assembly management, in collaboration with the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies, the senators-elect insisted that to ensure full independence of the parliament, the Constitutional provisions on the emergence of presiding officers must be followed.
Senator-elect Ned Nwoko, representing Delta-North senatorial district on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said members of the 10th Senate would reject any attempt by the executive to pocket the Legislature.
Senator-elect AbdulRahman Kawu-Sumaila, a former minority leader of the House of Representatives, now representing Kano-South on the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) platform, said any attempt to impose presiding officers on the 10th National Assembly would fail.
